Catholic Educator

A Weekend With Teens in Washington

2012-01-24T15:53:00.019-06:00

It’s hard to be pessimistic about the future when you spend three days with 28,000+ teenagers as I did this weekend in Washington, D.C. for the "March for Life".

I had the opportunity to chaperone 65 of our students and 20 more or so from Our Lady of the Lake parish for the trip. Deacon Brian Edwards, chaplain of JPII, Melissa Vaughn, JPII's Christian Service Coordinator, and I boarded one bus, whereas Patti Defendall of OLOL and parent volunteers boarded another. We left at 7 a.m. on Saturday, arrived in D.C. around 10 p.m. at St. Martin’s parish and hit the ground running. Students led each other in the rosary on the bus trip up, attended Mass together at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Sunday morning, took a tour of the N.C.C.B. offices where we met two impressive women dedicated to the pro-life cause (see below), spent a couple of hours at a nearby Boys’ Club so as to shower (our only opportunity all weekend!), then attended a lively Youth Rally at a local high school, headlined by the performance of Tony Melendez, an internationally famous musician without any arms, who plays guitar with his feet (!). On Sunday we were out the door at 6 a.m. to get a seat at the Verizon Center, seated by 8 a.m., participated in another concert, then celebrated Mass, ate lunch in our seats after wards, marched first to the Mall and then joined with the larger group at the Washington Mall for the march to the Supreme Court. Despite cold, rainy weather, there were no fewer than 100,000 hearty souls participating in the march, full of cheer and enthusiasm. We ate dinner that evening at Union Station with thousands of others, then loaded the buses at 8 p.m. for the long trek home, arriving at 5 a.m. Yes, I was tired.

There were three highlights of the trip for me:

1) First, the youth Mass on Sunday morning. It’s a rare thing to pray with 3 cardinals, 14 bishops, 200+ priests and over 20,000 teenagers in a venue as large as the Verizon Center (see pic above). But even that venue was too small, as organizers had to simulcast the event to the DC Armory at another part of town to another 8,000 teenagers. The music was excellent, the sermon was powerful, the kids sang and responded enthusiastically. But for me, the most touching part was as each bishop in attendance was introduced, the kids from that diocese cheered wildly, proud of their bishop, proud of their diocese, proud of their Church.

2) Second, the visit with Dr. Therese Notare and Dr. Helen Alvare in the National Catholic Conference of Bishops' offices on Sunday afternoon. I will admit I was not looking forward to that tour (“What? Some offices?"), but when Alvare showed up by chance as a friend of Dr. Notare, I became instantly enthused. Dr. Alvare, now a professor of law at George Mason University, represented the pro-life movement in the Catholic Church for over a decade in the 1990’s, and as such was ubiquitous, appearing on CSPAN before congressional sub-committees, on Night Line, as a regular commentator for network news, as a participant in PBS debates and as a guest on Sunday morning talk shows. She was brilliant and persuasive in her role, as this six minute clip off Youtube from several years back indicates:
I was pleased that our girls, in particular, found this articulate, pro-life feminist so compelling a figure, and they flocked to talk with her after her general remarks to the group.

3) Finally, spending all that time with our students. Our kids were SPECTACULAR—full of joy, conviction, spirit and life. Yes, as they jabbered on throughout the night on the bus trip home I might have had less complimentary thoughts, but I’ve had a chance to rest up! During the march, our kids led cheers, danced, sang songs, challenged other groups to respond to their cheers and brought many smiles to passers-by. They exhibited state pride by singing “Rocky Top” (a few hundred times) but changed the lyrics to fit the occasion (“Rocky Top, You’ll Always Be--A Pro-Life State to Me”). I was able to tease with the guys as we slept on cafeteria floors at night about the various smells emanating from certain quarters (remember, only one bath all weekend), and joke with the girls about how lovely they looked stumbling out of the bus at 3 a.m. at the rest stops for bathroom breaks. Two junior girls with agile, active minds sat in the seats just behind the adults and kept us entertained for hours with tales of misadventure and their “what if?” imaginations.

How blessed I am to work with smart, committed, faithful kids at JPII! They’re going to make a big difference in this world one day. I caught a glimpse of that future beginning to unfold this weekend.

Building Cathedrals and Facebook

2012-01-16T11:50:00.021-06:00

For Teachers

Despite an affinity for technology, I resisted the temptation to set up a Facebook account. I have a hard enough time keeping up with a cell phone, work phone, two voicemails and three email accounts and worried that Facebook would simply add to my “to do” list. But I relented recently, mostly because as I get older I am becoming more nostalgic, and wanted to find out what some of my old high school friends were up to. It’s been a while.

Something unexpected happened within a few days of starting the account. Dozens of former students, now married and in their late twenties and mid-thirties, began to send me “friend” requests. “How are you doing, Mr. Weber?” (It’s hard for thirty-somethings, even, to address their former principal as “Faustin”). It’s been fun catching up with them, learning about their spouses and families, what professions they are now in—to see, really, how they’re doing now 10 or 20 years removed from high school. Since the last time I really knew them was in high school, it’s like I’ve shot twenty years into the future with them—a rare gift for an educator, since most of the time we are "prophets of a future not our own,” (Oscar Romero) and don't often get a chance to see the final results.

One young man, now in his late 30’s, gave me particular pause. I remember him as a freshman. He was overweight, sulky, and unhappy with his life; if I recall correctly, his parents had recently divorced. Each day he would shuffle into my freshman English class, sit in the back and brood. But he had a bright mind, and with pushing and prodding from his teachers over the course of four years, he slowly became more willing to engage in class, more willing to risk relationships with his classmates, more comfortable in his own skin. Fast forward twenty years now. This young man is happily married, with two children, one of whom is now nearing middle school age. He has a good job that he seems to love, if his posts are any indication. He seems happy.

One of the themes of my remarks to our faculty this year is that we are “building cathedrals.” It reflects back to the story of two medieval bricklayers, one of whom is miserable, doing the “same damn thing over and over,” the other of whom seems to truly to enjoy his work. When the second is asked why he enjoys what his co-worker detests, he says simply that he is “building a cathedral.” Teaching—I guess any profession--is a lot like bricklaying: there’s a tedious side to it, and if we lose sight of our larger purpose, it can wear us down.

But building cathedrals takes a long time! Generations of cathedral builders didn't get to see the fruit of their labor: It took 182 years, for example, to build the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris (see above). The greatest gift for an educator, then, is to get a glimpse of the role they played in the life of their students many years later.

Here’s a poem entitled, appropriately enough, “Cathedral Builders” by the Welsh poet John Ormand:

They climbed on sketchy ladders towards God,

with winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven,

inhabited the sky with hammers,

defied gravity,

deified stone,

took up God's house to meet him,

and came down to their suppers

and small beer,

every night slept, lay with their smelly wives,

quarreled and cuffed the children,

lied, spat, sang, were happy, or unhappy,

and every day took to the ladders again,

impeded the rights of way of another summer's swallows,

grew greyer, shakier,

became less inclined to fix a neighbor's roof of a fine evening,

saw naves sprout arches, clerestories soar,

cursed the loud fancy glaziers for their luck,

somehow escaped the plague,

got rheumatism,

decided it was time to give it up,

to leave the spire to others,

stood in the crowd, well back from the vestments at the consecration,

envied the fat bishop his warm boots,

cocked a squint eye aloft,

and said, "I bloody did that."

Perhaps there’s a kid in our classes right now that is really difficult to work with. We can’t break through. My prayer is that we will persist in our efforts, so that one day, when we see this young man or woman twenty years from now, happily married, perhaps, or gainfully employed, we can say to ourselves, with supreme pride and satisfaction, “I bloody did that.”

On the Chase

2012-01-16T08:50:00.018-06:00

In Western Christianity, the symbol of the Holy Spirit is a dove. Doves are quiet, gentle creatures; we even use the expression “gentle as a dove.” I believe our image of God and the Holy Spirit working in our lives is shaped by that image—a gentle force that quietly coos at us.

But in Celtic Christianity, the symbol of the Holy Spirit is not a dove but a wild goose—unpredictable, untamed, free. A wild goose doesn’t coo, it honks. It seems to have its own mind, which may or may not agree with our own.

The Christian journey is not walk down a well worn path; rather, we’re on a wild goose chase! In the vernacular, that expression means we’re chasing after something which is elusive. But in terms of faith, it means we don’t know the twists and turns of our life and cannot predict where a relationship with God will lead us, but if we give our lives over to him, our lives will indeed become an adventure: full of love, disappointment, hope, sorrow and mystery.

There’s part of us, the part that likes to plan things, that wants to know what the future holds for us 20 years out, but in the words of John Dunne, CSC, that would be the “deadly clear path” which would rob our lives of adventure, wonder, awe. Instead, we are like cars driving down a windy road at night, with the headlights only illuminating a patch of darkness before us. The only way to see beyond that patch is to keep driving forward. That’s the excitement of life, the thrill, the journey--no telling where the goose may lead us.

Come Holy Spirit.

With Arms Wide Open

2012-01-08T07:14:00.014-06:00

Ann Carell likes to tell the story when she and her husband Monroe were fortunate enough to have a private meeting with Pope John Paul II in the mid 1990's. "He was such a charismatic, holy man," Ann recalls, "that you could almost feel what the apostles must have felt." So moved by their encounter, they met with Bishop Kmiec when they returned to Nashville and told him of their intention to give the diocese a large gift, provided whatever came of the gift would bear John Paul II's name. "How about a high school?" the bishop asked. Thus was born Pope John Paul II High School, which opened in 2002.

This made for a relatively unusual situation: long before pencil hit paper in the design of the school building, everyone knew the name of the school. And that knowledge partly inspired the design. The front courtyard of the school building was created to be reminiscent of St. Peter's square in Rome, with its colonnades in an open circle, extending from St. Peter's cathedral. The great Italian Renaissance sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed the square, and his intent was to symbolize "the maternal arms of the Church" reaching out to the world and embracing those within.

I think this is a beautiful and appropriate image for Pope John Paul II High School and I am delighted that our architecture speaks to one of our defining philosophies. Over the last ten years, we have indeed endeavored to "reach out" to the broader middle Tennessee area. While always first a Catholic school, approximately 40% of our student body is not Catholic, and we have found this makes for a rich and fertile inter-religious dialogue. Because we aspire to be more than a little school from Hendersonville, we send buses to pick up students across the middle Tennessee region, ranging from Lebanon, to Clarksville and even to Bowling Green, KY. At last look, we have students from ten different counties attending JPII.

This "outwardness" has also inspired many other features of the school: Our Christian Service Initiative, in which students are asked to give forty hours of community service each year to those who are less fortunate, the curriculum itself, which requires three years of a foreign language so as to help students learn and appreciate other cultures, and our two international exchange programs with St. Edmund's in England and St. Meinrad's in Muenster, Germany, both of which help students develop friendships with peers in other countries but also forge global perspectives that are impossible to achieve if rooted only to a single time and place.

JPII has thrived as a school because it has shunned what is sometimes the case about Catholic and private schools: that they are clannish, almost tribal in their instinct. While themes like "tradition," "family," and "legacy" can be powerful anchors that link a school to its past, they can also be stultifying, insulating forces that narrow a school's vision, limit its possibilities and thereby undercut its scope of influence.

May JPII always be true to the architecture of its own building by encouraging its leaders, its teachers and its students to reach beyond itself.

In the Bleak Mid-winter

2011-12-14T07:06:00.007-06:00

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him: my heart.

(Text: Christina Rossetti, 1830-1894, music, Gustav Holst 1874-1934, performed by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Advent in the First World

2011-11-27T13:45:00.014-06:00

This is Mr. Weber's Advent message to the students of JPII during assembly on November 28, 2011.

My brother sent me an email of a list of “First World Problems,”--a series of quips that mock how lazy we’ve become as part of a wealthy culture. To give you a sense of them:

• My hand is too fat to shove into the Pringles container, so I am forced to tilt it.

• I forgot to bring my smartphone with me when I used the bathroom, so I was bored the entire time.

• I can’t hear the TV while I’m eating crunchy snacks.

• My laptop is low on battery, but the charger is over there.

Those quips are funny, partly because there’s an element of truth to them. We live in a culture of excess, where our values become skewed in pursuit of things, at the expense of our relationships with God and with others. You may remember the accounts a few years back of a woman being trampled to death by customers when a Walmart opened on "Black Friday". This past Friday in a Los Angeles Walmart, a woman was arrested for pepper spraying 20 fellow customers so she could clear the path to be the first one to get to the Xbox consoles that were on sale. And there was also a story of a man who had just come out from shopping at Walmart in California at 1:45 a.m. , and was accosted at gunpoint by another man in the parking lot, who demanded that he hand over everything he had just purchased. The man, protective of his new stuff that he had been up all night to purchase, refused. He was shot. He is in the hospital, in critical but stable condition. No word as to whether he was able to keep his things.

One might hope that excess becomes self-regulating—that once one had too much, one might grow bored and seek less. But the opposite is true. Once one has too much, he does indeed become bored, but instead looks for MORE to satisfy his boredom. There are estimates that the average American will gain 5 pounds from over-eating from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day this year. Others believe this estimate is too high. But what BOTH sides agree on is that those who are already over-weight going into the holidays will gain much more weight than the average American. Excess, unfortunately, inspires more excess.

One of the great things about the Advent season, which began yesterday, is that we’re reminded we’re still in need of a savior. We are still sick. Yes, Jesus came and died for us almost 2000 years ago, and he is ever ready to forgive us and heal us. But we forget that we need him. Perhaps that’s the most serious danger about being in a first world country—it’s not even the excess or the laziness, but that we tend to think of ourselves as self-sufficient, as independent, as NOT NEEDING a savior. People who have nothing rarely forget God. They pray to him for their next meal. They ask him to cure their daughter’s illness. They worry and pray about where they’re going to sleep when the winter comes. But too often, we believe our success is all about our talents, our brains, our good decisions, and we forget that all of the good things we enjoy are blessings from God, and that we still need him to be Lord of our families, Lord of our relationships, Lord of our school work and our business dealings and Lord of our decisions.

Recently, my computer at home had become very sluggish—irritatingly so. It’s been a while, so I spent some time this weekend defragmenting my hard drive, deleting old files, getting rid of some preferences that are clogging things up. It’s working much faster now.

Advent is a time in our lives to do the same thing: to delete some of the things that are taking us away from God, to pray more, to study harder, to become more grateful for God’s gifts and more serious about our relationship with him. The psalmist from this Sunday’s readings prayed: “Turn us again to yourself, O God. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then may we be saved.” (Psalm 80:3).

As we prepare for Christmas even within this culture of wealth and excess, and even as we jockey for position in department stores and malls (hopefully, without using pepper spray), may use this Advent season to turn again to God, so that his face may shine down upon us and so that we may welcome his birth in our hearts in a new and deeper way.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel!

Keeping Balanced

2011-11-20T11:05:00.008-06:00

Mr. Weber discusses the new extra-curricular policy with students.

Keeping balanced is one of the most challenging things about being a student at JPII. There are so many good things to be part of in this school—from athletics, to Model UN, from Chorus to Instrumental Music, from Math teams to Science Olympiad teams—that it’s easy to overcommit ourselves and for our studies to get the short end of the stick. Notice the choice isn’t usually something like: do I do my homework tonight, or should I go out and get drunk? It isn’t a choice between good and bad. It’s most often a choice between good and good, and keeping all these good things you want to do in some sort of order.

That’s why we implemented the extra-curricular policy this year, to help you keep things in balance. Just to be clear about the policy:

If you have more than 2 or more F’s at mid-quarter or the end of the quarter, you are placed on academic probation, and sidelined from any school activity that takes place outside of the 7:50-3:10 school day.

That probation lasts a minimum of one full week. To become eligible to play for the next week, you must get permission from all 8 of your teachers on Thursday or Friday via a signed form, and give that form to your coaches or advisor.

That will allow you to participate from Monday through Friday of the following week, but you must take around the same form and have your teachers sign the form if you want to play the week after that, and so on until the next set of mid-quarters or quarter grades come out and it’s determined if you’re off academic probation.

It’s your responsibility—not your teachers, your coaches, nor your advisor—to get those forms signed. If they’re not completely signed, you’re ineligible for another week.

And what are teachers looking for before they can sign permission for you to participate again? One simple word: effort. You may be in a class that is tough for you, and even if you work really hard, you may not do well on a test every now and then. But all 580 of you have complete control over how much effort you put into a class.

It’s not hard for teachers to determine if you’re trying or not. It begins with homework. I know there are other schools and school systems that have given up on the idea of requiring homework, but we haven’t. That’s YOUR commitment to your studies, and you’re either doing it or you're not. The second way for a teacher to determine effort is whether or not you’re going to tutorials. If you’re failing a subject because the material is hard, and you’re not coming in to get extra help, you’re not taking the steps you need to get yourself right. The third piece is making up missed work: Have you or haven't you? Those are the questions teachers will be pondering before they do or don’t sign your permission to participate the following week.

So I think it’s important to realize that becoming re-eligible is not a matter of bringing your grade back to passing. You may have had a bad test grade and getting your grade back up isn’t something you can do in one week. It’s not about getting your grade restored, but your effort restored. If you really care about the activity you’ve been sidelined from, you have the ability to get yourself right back within the week by working hard in those classes. We believe if the effort is right, the grade will usually take care of itself.

As I look over the academic probation list, I have an observation. At the end of the first quarter, we had the best set of grades and fewest failures in the history of JPII. Unfortunately, as a result, some of you decided to give yourself a vacation during the first four weeks of this quarter, as if you can't tolerate prosperity. I hope you're back from vacation! If you’re a hockey player, the team needs you back. If you’re a choral student, the Christmas concert is just around the corner and they need you. If you play basketball, this could be a special season if you keep up with your studies. Do what you need to do. Don’t let your team, your coach, or your advisor down.

Get the balance right and enjoy all the good things JPII has to offer.

Elevating Spirits, Nourishing Souls

2011-11-13T19:24:00.008-06:00

Many of you remember my son Aaron, who graduated from JPII in the class of 2010 and is a current sophomore at Notre Dame. You may also remember me telling a brief story about him when he was a young boy. From the time he was a toddler, he started banging on pots and pans in rhythm to music. I think the first time we realized he had talent was when he was nine, after he executed a drum roll using two forks on a frying pan. So for his tenth birthday, we purchased him a Tama drum set. When he saw the set, he said something that I thought was unusual for a ten year old. Not “thanks Mom and Dad.” Not “Wow! That’s really cool!’ He said instead, with complete joy on his face, “I’m free! I’m free!”

I was reminded of that story as I watched the actors and actresses perform in our school play “Harvey” yesterday. The play was excellent, and I really enjoyed it. But if you really watched the students perform, it was obvious that they really enjoyed it, too. There was joy on their faces, as if performing in the character of someone else, getting out of their own skin and becoming someone else, is, in fact, liberating. And I saw that same joy in those of you who performed in what was a very touching Veteran’s Day concert last week, and as I watched some of you draw striking facial images on the large cardboard posters last week in the back hallway. And if you watch our best singers perform in concert, they almost can’t help smiling as they sing.

“Where words fail,” someone once said, “art often speaks, elevating the human spirit and nourishing the soul. “ That’s why I believe the arts are so important to JPII, so important to our life and identity here. We are a very unusual school in that all students are required to take three years of the arts here—most schools require just one—but because of that, your teachers are able to go much deeper than what too often amounts to “arts and crafts” at other schools. I was reminded of that when I walked into Mrs. Deal’s class last week and they were critiquing a photograph in terms of context and texture: the quality and depth of the students’ comments were impressive.

According to a study published by Dr. James Catterall, a professor from the University of California (cf. “Arts Education Partnership”) the study of the arts has very positive effects in advancing goals in other classes. Drama, for example, helps students understand social relationships and emotions and improves concentrated thought and comprehension. Music improves math achievement and proficiency, reading and cognitive development, and has even been shown to boost ACT or SAT verbal scores. The visual arts improves content and the organization of writing, improves reading skills and interpretation of text, and reasoning about scientific images. All these facts are just more reasons why it’s so short-sighted and sad when other school systems regard the arts as the first thing to cut in the curriculum when they need to save money.

Last year, our Board of Trustees published a five year strategic plan for JPII, called Vision 2016. Included in that plan were two major capital initiatives: upgrading our athletic fields and facilities and the creation of a the fine arts center. With the generous gift from Mr. Carell, we are just about finished with the athletic facilities—they laid down the sod Friday on the lower stadium and are putting rubber on the track this week. We now turn our attention to the fine arts center. The truth is, our fine arts program has been much more successful than even our founders, who were very pro-arts, dreamed. Not only do we have all students taking art for three years, many of you take a 4th year of art as an elective, and some of you take 5 or 6 classes by the time you graduate. We’re out of space!

I already have architectural drawings for the new center which include almost double the space for our 3D program, a digital computer lab adjacent to our Photography classroom, a huge 2D art room with large windows and natural light and an adjacent critique room (that gets Mr. King out of his glorified closet), a big, wide hallway with a skylight overhead that includes recessed walls to display student art, a multi-purpose room for one act plays and mini-concerts, a much larger choral room with elevated ceilings, plus additional practice rooms to support our choral and band programs, and bathrooms. It’s very exciting. The architect estimates the expansion will cost in the neighborhood of 3,000,000, and to do that, we’re going to need a lead gift of a little more than half of that before we can go out and raise the additional monies to make it happen.

How soon? That will depend on the generosity of someone capable of making such a lead gift. Pray with me that someone may be moved to help us. We’ve accomplished a lot in ten years, and all of us have reason to be proud of our school and its many programs. This would be the next big step for us.

The Right Way

2011-11-06T15:16:00.017-06:00

We find ourselves at the end of the fall athletic season and the beginning of the winter season. I had the opportunity on Friday night to talk briefly with the football team after the game, because I think despite their won-loss record, they’ve really represented our school with dignity and class, and they competed with pride in their team and school from the beginning to the end.

As you know, we’re celebrating our tenth year as a school this year. High school athletics has changed a great deal in those ten years, and not for the better.

• Those of you who are athletes—in any sport—know that it’s a now year round commitment: In addition to weight-lifting, you’re supposed to be playing club ball in the off season, and in some cases, even play club ball during the high school season. Too many give lip service to the idea of “student-athlete” but then expect you to play on two different teams simultaneously, with a demanding practice schedule and travel tournaments every weekend, and expect you to perform at your best in the classroom. Something's got to give; there's only so much of you that can go around.

• Too many of you are also under pressure to “specialize” in one sport by your club coaches, who are telling you it’s the only way to get a scholarship, but the cost is you don’t have a chance to join other clubs and participate in other extra-curriculars at the school, much less represent your school on other athletic teams. And no matter how much you love a sport, if that’s all you’re doing year round, year in and year out, it gets boring at best and stifling at worst. I heard a comedian once say: “My wife was in labor for 30 hours before the birth of our first baby. I don’t even want to do something that feels GOOD for that long!” But some adults expect you to start playing year round ball when you’re 8 or 9, and find it mystifying when you’re ready to quit and do something else when you’re 16 or 17.

• Schools, too, are to blame. Too many are importing athletes, giving them what can only be described as “pay for play” scholarships, simply for the purpose of winning. When we were interviewing candidates for athletic director last year, I asked each candidate what steps he would recommend to improve our athletic program. One candidate said simply: “Give out more athletic scholarships, lower your academic standards, and hire tutors to help the athletes you bring in. “ I appreciate this coach’s candor—we often try to politely avoid being so blunt—but that’s exactly the formula some of our competitors have adopted. And to what end? So that we can feel good about having the best team money can buy? Is that really going to make us proud?

That's not who we are.

I am as competitive as any person in this school, but if we sell our soul for the purpose of winning we have betrayed our school’s mission and the higher purpose of high school athletics. Instead, we will continue to build our program the right way:

• We will continue to seek students who are committed first to receiving a first tier education in addition to the opportunity to play for their school and seek out families who support that goal. That will always be an important priority. If you’re only interested in coming to JPII for a sport, you won’t make it through the academic program. We are committed to the Renaissance ideal here, where you develop the whole person: your minds, your artistic abilities, your faith and your athletic talents.

• We will continue to hire excellent coaches who are similarly committed to the school’s mission, who care about you and your development as young men and women as their highest priority. Our coaches are quite good—show me better lacrosse coaches, for example, or a better weightlifting coach, or a more credentialed high school football coach, or more successful soccer and cheerleading coaches. I don’t think there are any, and I only mention those few to make the point.

• Yes, we will continue to accept with gratitude gifts from donors such as Mr. Carell, who has now allowed us to have one of the nicest facilities in all of middle Tennessee.

• Coach Zazzaro, your coaches and I will lobby the TSSAA for more control over our schedule, so that we have more flexibility to schedule teams who share our philosophy concerning high school athletics, rather than be forced to play too many games with those who do not. We will do our best to encourage reforms within high school athletics that discourages importing of athletes for pay. We will continue to give financial aid to the best of our ability to ALL families who need it, whether or not their children are athletic, because that’s who we are and what we believe.

• And we will continue to celebrate the successes of the MANY athletic teams who win the right way here. Let us not forget, we are the reigning state champions in lacrosse. We are perennial contenders for the state title in hockey. Our soccer teams, boys and girls, typically go deep into the playoffs each year. Our baseball team has been to the play-offs for two years now. Our swim team dominates Sumner County and has individual athletes who are tops in the state. Our golf team has been to state for consecutive years. Our bowling team has won a state championship. Our women’s basketball program is very competitive.

All of us, whether we’re “in” to athletics or not, should be proud of our players, our coaches and teams. Similarly, all of us, whether we’re “in” to the arts or not, should be proud of the quality of our choral, theater, visual arts and instrumental program. We should be proud of our math and science teams, our Model UN teams, our Youth in Government teams, our Forensic team—any group that represents us against other schools. We are proud of the accomplishments of our students and our classmates where-ever and however they shine.

JPII is an excellent school. We are the Knights. I am proud to be your principal.

ACE 16 Graduation Speech

2011-08-28T08:28:00.005-05:00

My son, Faus, graduated from the Alliance for Catholic Education program at Notre Dame this summer. The program asks college graduates to make a two year commitment to teach in an under-resourced Catholic school somewhere in the country, during which time they study and earn a Master's degree. Faus was stationed in Denver and taught at two different Catholic schools. He was asked to represent his class as the graduation speaker in July.

He is currently a middle school science and social studies teacher at St. Rose of Lima in Denver.

Establishing a Routine

2011-08-21T08:15:00.006-05:00

This talk was given to JPII students on August 22, 2011 during school assembly.

There was a senior boy I knew that would walk into school every Monday morning comatose, almost like a walking zombie. He was a smart kid, but if he took a test on Monday, he usually did very poorly. By Wednesday, he was OK and did much better in school, only to walk into school as a zombie the following Monday. Yes, I suspect drinking was an issue. But I think there was something else happening to him: his whole body clock was completely screwed up from the weekend as well.

Sleep is a good thing. Our bodies need it, and in general as a society, we don’t get enough of it. That’s particularly true of you as teenagers. Scientists are unanimous that you need an average of 8.5 to 9 hours/night to function at peak efficiency, which would mean if you woke up at 6 a.m. for school, you’d have to be asleep in bed by 9 or 9:30 p.m. That’s not happening! Nationally, only 15% of teens get the right amount of sleep, and I suspect the number is even smaller here at JPII.

There’s a commercial that Clairol used to run of a beautiful model who would say: “Clairol: It costs more, but I am worth it.” The underlying message: indulge and pamper yourself. But I think there’s probably a difference between pampering oneself and taking care of oneself. The difficulty of adjusting to high school really isn’t the difficulty of the curriculum but finding the right balance, in disciplining oneself to not only keep up with the homework but also balancing the extra-curricular life with the need to sleep, eat and exercise properly. It’s a time management issue, really, and for most of you, your parents are giving you the space to manage your time as you see fit.

Incredibly, we’re beginning our fourth week of school today. By now you have a sense of your classes, which ones are the most demanding, which ones you’ll need to concentrate more on to do well. You know what your coaches expect of you, and you have an idea of which clubs you want to join and what the time commitments are. If you haven’t already, it’s important to find your groove, to establish the right routine so that you can operate most efficiently. Our bodies are like machines in many ways, and work at their best when we have a regular bedtime, wake-up time, time for rest, time for work. That’s partly why this senior boy was such a zombie and why, for example, most of us are cranky on Mondays: we’ve disrupted the natural rhythm of am earlier routine bedtime and wake-up time from the week by staying up much later and waking up much later on the weekends.

Regular sleep, regular exercise, and regular study times- find the routine that works best for you and try and stick to it. And don’t forget to include prayer as part of that routine: God wants us to rely on him, and when we do so, we’ll find he can take a lot of weight off our shoulders.

Have a good week.

Pay it Forward!

2011-08-14T07:40:00.003-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's assembly address to JPII students on August 15, 2011

You may remember the movie that came out in 2000 called “Pay it Forward,” starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment. Osment plays a young boy, Trevor McKinney, who decides to do a school project in which he does three good things for three people, and then asks those three people to do three good things for someone else, to pay the generosity forward. The idea behind the movie is that individuals can change the world through kindness that inspires more kindness.

Since that movie, there has been a national movement called “Pay it Forward” that has its own website and invites people to share stories of ordinary people being inspired to help others. A couple of interesting stories: There’s a posting from an employees at McDonalds who worked the drive-through. One day a man came through and paid for the person behind him, who then paid for the person behind him. Apparently this went on for about 35 cars before someone broke the streak. There’s a story of a woman who had a flat tire, who was helped by a passerby. When she offered to pay him $40, he said he’d prefer she do something nice for someone else in his name, so she contributed the $40 to a soup kitchen.
There’s another story about ten college girls who went out for breakfast, and another patron paid their bill, saying they were the future of our country, so that the next time each of the girls went to a restaurant, they each paid for a random person’s dinner there.

This theme of “Pay it Forward” is going to be the theme on Friday night, when we thank Mr. Carell for his magnificent gift to JPII in the opening of the Jim Carell Athletic complex. He’s challenged us to respond to the magnificent gift he’s given us by being generous back, by paying it forward. There will be opportunities for us to purchase bricks and contribute to the completion of the project, including lights, statues and other finishing touches. But beyond the financial piece, I hope that paying it forward will be a theme in your life in your dealings with others. God has blessed us in so many ways as students and teachers of JPII, and the only real way we can repay him is to return that generosity by helping others.

May your generosity, through your Christian service and through your day to day interactions with your peers in the hallways of JPII, always be a mark of this school and this student body.

Building Cathedrals

2011-08-06T08:23:00.045-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's talk with parents in JPII's "Back to School Night" on August 11, 2011.

The story is told of two brick-layers, working on a project together in medieval France. One is a miserable cuss, constantly complaining about the monotony of his job: "Brick after brick, same thing, over and over, " he often grumbles. But the other mason is happy, takes pride in what he is doing, and even whistles while he works. This fascinates their foreman, who finally asks the second why he likes his job so much. “Why?” he responds. “Because I am doing something important. I am building a cathedral! “

It's easy for all of us, within the scope of raising or educating children, or within our jobs and the built-in stresses of meeting deadlines, handling complaints, or dealing with difficult people, to lose sight of the big picture, the "why" of what we're doing. It's too easy to become like the first mason.

On the occasion of our tenth anniversary year of Pope John Paul II's opening as a high school, we spent a lot of time this summer--at our leadership meetings, during our Board retreat, in our pre-year faculty meetings--talking about the fundamental beliefs that inspire us at JPII, our "why." We were prompted to do this on the basis of Simon Sinek's book, "Start with the Why," a succinct summary of which is contained in this video:

What is the "why" of JPII? Our summer discussions were lively, inspirational, and full of story telling.

Mrs. Ebelhar told the story of when Golden Tate walked into her choral classroom for the first time as a freshman. Like all JPII students, he had to take three years of a fine arts class, and "singing" seemed like it would be the easiest and least objectionable. But he found out on that first day he'd have to learn to read music, sing in parts, and perform in public concerts. He wanted out--he was a football player, not a chorister! But he stayed, grudgingly, mostly because there weren't any other better alternatives. Fast forward to the end of Golden's junior year. He had completed his three year requirement, but he begged Mrs. Ebelhar to place him in the advanced men's choir as an elective for his senior year, where he would have to wear a tuxedo and perform. Mrs. Ebelhar agreed, of course. So even while Golden was being recruited by every university in the country as one of the nation's best high school football players, he also sang with great pride in the advanced men's choir.

There were many other stories. A coach told the story of a senior boy who was a C student when he came to JPII as a freshman-- in his mind, to play a sport. He's never made less than a B since, inspired to work hard in a culture where it's "cool to be smart," in the words of a recent graduate. An admissions counselor relayed the story of a young man who so shy during the admissions interview he could only mumble short phrases, but four years later, graduated a confident, happy, young man with a scholarship to one of our nation's best universities. As a faculty, we reminded each other, through these "before and after" stories, how privileged we were to watch God's grace work so powerfully in the life of so many of our students.

Each administrator, each Board member, each faculty member, described the "why" of JPII a bit differently this summer. As parents, you may have your own version. But the essence of the "why" in what we're doing is eloquently described by C.S. Lewis in a short passage from Mere Christianity:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

There is a great optimism in students at JPII--in who they are and what they can become. We believe if they are immersed in a culture of high expectations, if they are supported by adults who model right behavior and pick them up when they stumble, if they belong to a team, activity or club that they are passionate about with others who share that passion, and if they are invited to grow in their faith through many opportunities for worship and serving others, God will work in their life and help them flourish to become something special.

God’s dreams for us far exceed our own. We see only limits, whereas God sees infinite horizons. No matter where they begin, when teens are immersed in a culture of optimism, expectation, faith and support, they are elevated to look above the walls of their perceived limitations to see beyond what they once believed about themselves, beyond the cynicism of what society believes, even beyond what we who love them may see and hope for them.

That's why you sacrifice to have your kids here. The great joy of being a teacher or a parent at JPII is we get to witness this transformation -a liberation, even- as young men and women grow in confidence borne from achievement and as they begin to think differently about their futures.

Sure, there's going to be times when it's a little uncomfortable. As C.S. Lewis' beautiful analogy reminds us, when God starts "knocking about the house," it can be painful. Kids may be asked to work harder than they want, they may get grades from time to time that disappoint them, they may get irritated with us, much in the same way they get irritated with you as their parents when you set limits. Raising teens is not for the faint of heart! But it's all worth it. It's worth it because of the kind of young men and women they will become.

We, too, as parents and teachers, are building cathedrals! May God give us the wisdom to build well.

Taking Off the Training Wheels

2011-08-02T23:11:00.013-05:00

Editor's note: This is Mr. Weber's assembly address to JPII students on the first day of school, August 3, 2011.

Welcome students, to our tenth year as a school! I especially want to welcome the 166 brand new freshman and transfer students. Also, welcome to our good friends from England who are part of our Loughlin Scholars Exchange program and our four new students from Muenster, Germany. We're glad you are with us!

Those of you who’ve been here a while know that we sometimes quote our namesake, Blessed John Paul II, who had a special love and respect for young people. At World Youth Day one year, he challenged people exactly like you with this brief quote.

"Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch."

My family lives in Stonecrest neighborhood with a lot of young families. One day this summer as I was on a walk with my wife, I saw a father teaching his son how to ride a two-wheeler—I think they had just taken off the training wheels. This is a big, scary moment in the life of a little boy! I’m guessing the boy was about five. The dad would start by pushing him down the sidewalk as he held the boy up, let him get some speed as he ran with him, then let go. The boy would go about ten feet, the front wheel would begin to wobble, he’d lose his balance, and crash. But the young boy was determined. He’d pick himself up, call his dad over and try again. Ten feet on his own again, wobble, crash. Fifteen feet, wobble, crash. As we looped around the block about twenty minutes later, they were still at it. I estimate he crashed about fifteen times, until finally he was able to go unassisted. He called out—“Look Mommy, I’m doing it!” as Mom and Dad cheered him on with obvious joy and pride.

Fifteen times that little boy failed, but it didn’t deter him.

Something happens to us as we get older. At some point late in elementary school, we begin to shy away from failure. We begin to play it safe. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to look foolish or to be laughed at. Perhaps it’s because we don’t want to stand out and look different. But whatever the reason, we start aiming for the middle, where it’s safer and we draw less attention to ourselves. We start being satisfied with mediocrity.

That can take many forms in high school. Instead of trying out for a team, you can be the critic in the bleachers who makes fun of the players on the field. Instead of being the guy or girl who volunteers an answer in class, you can make fun of the person who seems eager and engaged. Instead of taking the risk to ask someone you like out, you can be the guy who plays World of Warcraft all night long. Instead of being the guy who really strives for good grades, you can be the person who just does the minimum to get by.

Don’t be that guy!

Here’s what I think: God has an unbelievably cool plan for your life that far surpasses the dreams that you might have for yourself. But he’s not going to force you to do something against your will or try to cram that plan down you throat. If he did, he’d take away your free will, and he respects you too much to do that. But if you’re open to God’s grace, if you’re willing to stretch yourself, join some clubs, do some things that are outside of your comfort zone, take some risks, he will work with you to make you something new, something special. Our job is to take those first steps. We have to take off the training wheels. We can’t play it safe.

So here’s an odd message for a headmaster to tell students on the opening day of school. I hope you fail often. That’s right—I hope you fail, and fail often! Because if you do so, that means you’re trying often and that you have the courage to keep getting back up onto that bike and trying again.

We can learn a lot from young children! May you have the courage to challenge yourself this year, to put out into the deep and let down your nets for the catch. If you do so, you'll be surprised at what God has in mind for you. May you all have a magnificent year!

Look Well Into Thyself

2011-07-23T01:38:00.013-05:00

Our public schools won't improve if reform initiatives come from on high.

It’s a familiar refrain: “In order to improve our schools, we’re going to implement _______. “

You can fill in the blank any way you’d like. We’re going to implement “new curricular standards.“ We’re going to demand “more accountability” or “tougher graduation standards” to ensure that “No child is left behind. “ Perhaps we’ll start a “reading across the curriculum” initiative, or “reduce class size,” or improve “teacher certification qualifications.”

American education is certainly not lacking in ideas! Nor do I mean to imply that some of these strategies aren’t worth pursuing. But here’s the problem:

Culture eats strategies for breakfast.

If the school culture is not supportive of good teaching and learning, all of the other strategic initiatives are a waste of time.

Several years ago my friend from college signed on to teach at a wealthy private high school in Texas. The school had excellent resources—he even had his own private office, something quite unusual for high school teachers. But it was a horrible experience. “I knew things were amiss,” he told me over the phone some time in October of that year, “when on the first day of school, the students addressed our principal as ‘Bob.’ Then, during my first period class, a young man stood up, stretched loudly, and began walking out the door. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To the bathroom’ the student replied casually. ‘I’ll be back in a few’ and walked out. I went into the hallways to demand he return, but noticed there were no fewer than 20 other students roaming the hallways.“

Suffice it to say, my friend had a miserable year. He had the teaching credentials. He was smart, passionate and committed. The school gave him resources, professional development money, a laptop computer, and classroom materials. But the culture made those things irrelevant almost from the very beginning, and by the end of the year, he said he was nothing more than a glorified babysitter, marking time until the day he could get out of his contract.

One of the endemic problems our schools face is that most reform initiatives come from somewhere other than the school itself: a federal mandate, a new state program, a county Board regulation. Local principals and faculty have too little control over their own fate and resources. I once served as an accreditation consultant for one of the largest public high schools in Alabama, a school of over 2000 students. “How much discretion do you have over your budget?” I asked the principal one afternoon. He laughed ruefully: “Whatever I make in the cafeteria coke machine.” He was being dead serious—in a school with an annual budget of 22 million dollars, he had authority over about $15,000.

The effect of so little control is that it discourages local initiative and the “can-do-it-whatever-it-takes” spirit that is a fundamental ingredient in building a culture that supports learning. A successful school culture is optimistic and inspirational. It inspires teachers to be creative in designing interesting classes and in finding new ways to reach out to students who are falling behind. It builds hope in students and encourages them to take risks and to stretch beyond themselves. It energizes school leaders to find innovative ways to support classroom teaching and to build relationships with families to support and sustain high standards.

There’s no single solution, no magic cure, no silver bullet that is going to make our schools better. But we’re headed in the wrong direction, I believe, when we look to improve our schools by imposing layers upon layers of federal or state mandates upon them. Let’s find ways instead to empower local school leadership to be entrepreneurial in creating the environments necessary to inspire good teaching and learning. And then get out of their way!

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there. " (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus)

Chamber Choir's Last Performance, 2011

2011-05-28T14:45:00.005-05:00

The Chamber Choir of JPII gave a riveting performance of "Omnia Sol" at the Commencement exercises for the class of 2011 on the stage of the Grand 'Ole Opry.

It was the last time many of the students in the chamber choir performed as students of JPII, ending a stellar four year career under the direction of Mrs. JJ Ebelhar.

The song was particularly appropriate for the occasion. Here's a brief excerpt:

Somewhere far from nowhere, I grew both strong and tall…
Longing to become, but knowing not the path at all!
But the footprints of the winter melted to fields of spring;
One last embrace before I cross the threshold: To life we sing!

I am proud to be associated with a school that fosters such excellence in the fine arts.

Bravo, students!

Baccalaureate Homily, Class of 2011

2011-05-23T07:54:00.009-05:00

Editor's Note:
At the baccalaureate mass for our graduating students, our school chaplain, Deacon Brian Edwards, gave such a moving homily that I asked him if I could post this on my blog, and he agreed.

There is nothing more important to the life and mission of our school
than that each and every one of you find the truth of Jesus Christ.
As Jesus said in today’s gospel,
“I am the way and the truth and the life.”
I hope that you’ve experienced Jesus wandering the halls of JP2.
I hope that he’s taught you in our classrooms,
and sat beside you in the dining hall.
I hope that he’s played next to you on our sports fields,
I hope that you’ve experienced Jesus in the sacrifice of the Mass.

I hope that you’ve seen him and experienced him,
Because that’s what it’s all about!
That’s what really matters!

You are about to graduate from high school,
and this is a time for celebration.
You should be proud of your accomplishments.
BUT you also stand at a major crossroads in your life.
You have many decisions to make,
about colleges, careers, and relationships.
Every decision brings you closer to God’s ultimate plan for you,
Or distances you from God and weakens you as a person.

It may seem odd for me to tell you this very personal story
on the eve of your graduation,
but I think it’s worth telling.

My brother graduated from Fr. Ryan in 1986
with a bright future ahead of him.
He went to college.
He was smart,
but he didn’t make good personal decisions.
He got involved in dangerous and risky activities--
And he became an alcoholic and an addict.
In 1986 when he was graduating from high school
he saw only the possibilities in his life.
But by the sum total of his decisions,
his risky behaviors,
his bad relationships,
His living life on the edge,
He developed a severe addiction that he never broke.
Instead his addiction broke him.
He went into treatment multiple times over many years,
but several years ago his cocaine addiction destroyed his life,
and he died a tragic and sudden death.
My little brother--
my baby brother.

He was at a crossroads in his life when he graduated high school,
but he took the wrong road.
I cannot adequately share with you the pain it caused my mother,
the pain it caused me and the rest of our family
to see a life full of such promise cut short so tragically.

As I say this to you, I can almost hear you thinking,
“What does this have to do with us?
…that’ll never happen to me!”
I truly hope it doesn’t,
but he would have said the same thing as he sat at his Baccalaureate Mass
on the eve of his high school graduation.

Every decision you make matters.
Every decision brings you closer to
or distances you more from
God’s ultimate plan for you.

The lure of materialism, greed and selfishness and lust are hard to resist.
And it’s especially hard when you go off to college.
College parties, alcohol, and so many other temptations are everywhere.

Work hard to preserve your dignity, your heart, your body and your soul!
God designed us for a particular purpose.
He’s created us for a specific destiny
--to be with him.
In the gospel today, Jesus said,
“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”
and “I am going to prepare a place for you.”

You are graduating from JP2 having learned much about the Catholic faith.
At a time when many people get their theology from shows like
“Ghost Whisperer”
or from other worldly influences like the gospel according to Hollywood
--or made-up theologies you can buy by the car-load in the self-help
or New Age section of the local bookstore,
at JP2 you have learned authentic Christian doctrine that actually means something.

Live the Christian faith!
Breathe it!
and share it!

Along with many Catholics,
JP2 also has a number of Christian students from other churches.
This is truly one of our strengths
--that we find Christ in each other,
that we learn from each other,
and that we grow together more deeply in our faith.

This faith is entrusted to you as you graduate from JP2.
Be strong in faith!
Avoid temptations!
Make good decisions!
Represent the mission and values of Pope John Paul II High School!
Pray faithfully!
Stay close to the Church and to the sacraments!
Find a Church on your college campuses!

Parents,
help your sons and daughters find a Church.
Along with your prayers
and your love,
there is no greater gift you can give them.

Earn This

2011-05-08T21:37:00.007-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's last address of the 2010-2011 school year.

On Friday, during a ceremony to bless our new weight room and thank Mr. Jim Carell for his generosity in helping us purchase the new equipment, Mr. Carell announced he was going to build us concession stands and bathrooms, turf our field, and furnish us with a new track. This is an extraordinary gift, the largest our school has ever received since its founding, when Mr. Carell’s brother Monroe and his wife Ann gave the diocese five million dollars as the lead gift in a 23 million dollar project to build this high school.

What can we say or do in response to such extraordinary generosity?

Jesus once said, “To he who is given much, much is expected” (Luke 12:48). I don’t think Jesus meant that because we’ve been given a turf field and a track, he expects us to win more games or track meets. I think he meant that those who have been treated generously must live their lives so that these gifts are not wasted, so that we become people who lead others to do what is good, to do what is right, and to do what is holy.

Seniors, this is the last high school assembly you will attend here as students of Pope John Paul II High School, and aside from a few introductory remarks at Awards Night and Graduation, the last time I will ever have the opportunity to speak to you. You may remember, way back in your freshman year when I spoke to you the first time, as a visitor, just after I had been announced as the new headmaster, but still months away from beginning here. I talked to you then about my favorite movie of all time, Saving Private Ryan. Recall the plot line. It was during World War II, and a mother had four sons who were sent into battle. Three sons were killed during the Normandy landing, and the fourth son, Private James Francis Ryan, a paratrooper (played in the movie by Matt Damon), was lost somewhere in Nazi-occupied France when a drop went badly.

When the Chief of Staff of the Army, General George Marshall, learns of the terrible fate of the mother who had lost three sons, he sends Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks) and a unit of his men on a rescue mission deep behind enemy lines to rescue her fourth son.Thus the title, “Saving Private Ryan.” Over the course of the mission, many of the unit’s soldiers die valiantly, and those who remain question why so many should die for the sake of just one man. At the end of the movie, the Tom Hanks character, Captain Miller, is also mortally wounded. But before he dies, he brings Private Ryan close to him, and whispers on behalf of the many who have died rescuing him, “Earn this!”

Earn this, seniors. No, we've not been in WWII. But for four years, your parents have gone through great sacrifice to send you to what I still believe to be, as I said to you then, one of the very best high schools in the country. Earn this. Your teachers and coaches are at the very top of their profession and they sacrifice a lot to teach here, but they are committed to the mission of this place, and committed to you. Earn this, on behalf of the donors like the Carells who have made this place possible, but also the many, many people who have given what they can to keep JPII affordable to those who otherwise would not be able to attend.

“To those given much, much is expected.”

It has been a great privilege to have you as students here. Now, as we sing from time to time at mass, go make a difference! The world needs smart, virtuous, faithful leaders. Go make a difference in this world, and may God bless you!

Junior Ring Ceremony, 2011

2011-04-26T19:59:00.004-05:00

Note: These are Mr. Weber's remarks to the junior class, on the occasion of the junior ring ceremony at JPII on April 27, 2011.

12 days.

Twelve days of classes until Senior Walk, May 13, the last day of class for seniors, the last time they will walk the hallways as students of JPII. Though our rightful attention will be on them--and there will be hugs and photographs and tears--something else is happening that is less noticed. From that moment on, this class, the junior class of Pope John Paul II High School, the class of 2012, will take on the mantel as leaders of the JPII student body.

Junior ring ceremonies are not principally about getting jewelry. They are really rites of passage ceremonies, a formal calling out of the junior class to become the kind of leaders that good schools must have. No matter how talented the teachers, no matter how wise the administrators or the Dean of Students, no matter how well written the school policies, schools are only good in so far as the students of that school help build a culture that supports those teachers, the administration and the policies of the school. And whether or not a student body is willing to build such a culture depends on the senior class. IF the seniors buy in, the rest of the school follows. If not, it’s going to be an unpleasant year for everybody.

I am not talking about some sort of slavish obedience. We want students who are willing to politely question, express their disagreements, even push the envelope a bit. That’s why I am using the word “culture.” When there is a culture of mutual respect, pleasantness, trust, then we can have our disagreements from time to time and that’s OK, because both sides appreciate and respect the perspective of the other side. A good culture is built through hundreds of small decisions of people trying to do the right thing, many of which are unnoticed and seem insignificant. A year or so ago, Liberty Mutual ran a very effective advertising campaign that showed one person doing something nice for another person, who then helped someone else, who then helped someone else. Generosity of spirit spreads quickly, even when the recipient of the generosity doesn’t understand its original source. I liken it to a still lake that suddenly begins to have waves. We don’t know what caused the waves because we can’t see it, but somewhere in that lake, someone made a splash. Goodness, kindness, and selflessness have ripple effects in a school that spread in multiple directions, across grade levels, in the classrooms, on ball teams, in the hallways.

That’s why I am excited about you juniors, about to become seniors. We came into this school together—I, the new headmaster here, you, new high school students--and I've had the opportunity to watch you grow as a class. Though you’ve always been the smallest class in the school, you are an impressive group—excellent students, yes, but even more importantly, good people and good leaders. After listening to all the arguments pro and con about moving back to the mixed grade level houses for next year, I decided that it was the right thing to do—and you want to know the major reason why? Because I figured that if I can put this class with younger students in houses and advisory groups, you can have a profoundly positive effect on them. If we keep you locked into the grade level houses we have now, we don’t give you enough exposure to the underclassmen and rob you of the chance to be their leaders.

I hope you will accept this responsibility with pride in your class and pride in your school. The rings you will receive are a symbol of your willingness to do so. But whether or not you’ve purchased rings, all students will be receiving a Bible as a gift from the school, a symbol of our prayers for you as you head into your senior year. In addition, each of these bibles has a personal inscription written by one of your teachers to lend their prayers and support for you as you face decisions about colleges, majors, roommates and all that you will have to decide next year.

Your parents, your teachers, and JPII are proud of the young men and young women you are becoming. Accept now the responsibility of building a culture that is supportive of your classmates and the mission of JPII. Commit yourself to the proposition JPII will be a better school because of you, because of what you want JPII to become and your willingness to lead the student body toward this aim.

In the gym of our school, across one of the walls behind the bleachers, is a quote from Scripture, Psalm 86: “Teach me your ways, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.” As your life accelerates into senior year, ask God to teach you and guide you, so that you may walk in his truth. If you do so, God will bless you and give you a profound peace and joy, even in the extreme busy-ness of your last year of high school. Strive to stay close to the Lord, and he will stay close to you.

What More?

2011-04-17T18:27:00.010-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's Easter message to the students of JPII.

The greatest sermon I’ve ever heard was when I was 15 years old, and I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a guest priest who spoke at our Church the week before Easter, and he told us about the story of his best friend growing up.

He and his friend met in kindergarten, attended the same elementary school all the way through, then went to the same high school. They spent so much time together they were practically brothers, often spending the night at the other one’s house. He loved going to his friends’ house because he was from a large, Italian Catholic family, and his mother was an excellent cook who was always giving him food. As fate would have it, they were both drafted into the Vietnam War together and ended up in the same unit. The priest said that one night, they were on guard duty in a foxhole out on the front lines—just the two of them. It was a crystal clear night, starry, with no sound whatsoever, and he remembers his friend had pulled out a candy bar to eat, when suddenly, someone threw a live grenade into the foxhole, seemingly from no-where. They both hesitated, stunned. Then his friend, reacting more quickly, gave him a quick smile, handed him the candy bar, and threw himself on the grenade. His friend was blown apart and died instantly, but he was saved.

The priest said he was devastated for the loss of his best friend, and after the funeral, he spent a lot of time with the boys’ mother, mourning with her. He felt guilty that his friend had done what he had not done—why, he asked himself, had he not thought more quickly? Guilt turned to self-pity over the next several weeks. “Why him?” he asked the boys’ mother, over and over. “Why didn’t I do what he did?” “Do you think it was just instinct on his part?” “Do you think he did it out of love or was it just an automatic reaction?” “Do you think he really loved me?” The Italian mother, who herself had been grieving the loss of her son, could bear this no more. “You're asking me if he loved you? JESUS CHRIST, MAN, WHAT MORE COULD HE HAVE DONE FOR YOU?”

And the priest, as he told us this story, stopped, backed away from the lectern and said softly: “Jesus Christ—man, what more could he have done for you?” I was electrified, as if I had just heard the gospel for the very first time in my life. What more could Jesus have done for us?

As you know, this is the beginning of Holy Week, when we celebrate the passion and resurrection of Jesus. One of the real problems for us is that the story is too familiar. More than anything else, the passion and resurrection of Jesus is a love story—as John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” No matter what we’ve done, not matter what our sins, God loves us, and if we ask him, he will forgive us. He reminds us this Easter, that no matter how hard the cross we bear, that our final destiny is not the cross but the resurrection—that God’s love prevails, in the end.

The death and resurrection of Christ is the single-most important event in human history. I encourage you to attend your church’s services this week to remember and celebrate what God has done for us.

Two Governors

2011-04-02T16:59:00.028-05:00

I’ve personally attended only two lectures by governors in my life. The second time was this week, when Governor Haslam of Tennessee came to JPII as part of our “Distinguished Lecturer” series. The first time was in 1984, as a senior at Notre Dame, when I attended a lecture by Governor Cuomo of New York. Coincidentally, both talks were about the same topic: How should one’s Christian faith inform one’s political leadership? They gave strikingly different answers to that question.

Cuomo’s speech centered on abortion and was hailed in the press as an example of enlightened tolerance. As a Catholic, he said he fully respected the authority of the bishops that abortion was wrong. He would uphold that view, he said, for his wife and children. But as governor of a state that was predominantly pro-abortion, he did not believe it was proper to impose his religious belief upon his constituency. In a pluralistic society, one cannot govern by one’s faith, lest others’ freedoms be infringed upon in the name of his religious belief. This “personally opposed but cannot impose” position became the foundational position of a generation of politicians since that time.

Haslam, a Presbyterian, reasoned differently, drawing on the ideas of Pope John Paul II. Freedom, as the pope understood it, must be linked to the truth, or else it ends up being a pretense for tyranny, as the stronger person asserts his “freedom” over the rights of the weaker party. The pope was an unapologetic defender of the truth, known for directly challenging the assumptions of socialism and the excesses of capitalism with great vigor.

Did that make him boorish and judgmental, as we often regard people who claim to know “truth”? No, said Haslam. In fact, he was recognized as a model of Christian civility, admired by even those who disagreed with him. That was possible because John Paul II understood his Christian faith as a “gift, not a club.” Instead of using the truth of one’s faith to club people over the head, as we are often tempted to do, we should speak the truth while manifesting the gifts of our faith, namely, temperance, forgiveness, patience and kindness, to name a few. Haslam said that Christian politicians should never waiver from the convictions of their faith but must live out that faith in a manner that is charitable and befitting of their Christian vocation.

It is ironic that between the two governors, one Catholic, the other Presbyterian, the Presbyterian makes the more “Catholic” argument. Democracy in the Catholic tradition is a means and not the end, as Cuomo assumes. The end is the “common good,” whereby human dignity is protected and thrives. All laws must serve that common good. Exalting the notion of individual freedom to the extent that we cannot “impose” a value system on someone, even when that person uses his freedom to trample on the freedom of others, is self-contradicting. Further, it strips us of the ability to make any laws premised on a moral assumption. If we believe rape is wrong, can we not “impose” laws which punish rapists? Thieves? Murderers? Or should we merely be "personally opposed" to these things?

Thomas More, in Robert Bolt’s famous play “Man for All Seasons, ” confronts the same issue that both governors addressed. Though he is opposed in conscience to the divorce and remarriage of King Henry VIII, should he assent to the divorce out of loyalty to the king and in the interest of the peace and unity of England? More is unequivocal:

“I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”

The vetting of candidates during an election cycle serves an important public purpose: Candidates should make known their moral positions, and where they are evasive, we should pin them down. In my view, once elected, we should then expect them to govern according to the convictions of their conscience and their faith. If we don't approve of what that turns out to mean, we vote them out of office in the next election cycle.

Catholic School Salaries and Pay Scales

2011-03-25T09:52:00.008-05:00

In an earlier post, I discussed creative ways to pay Catholic school teachers to secure their services or keep them in the fold, recognizing that often what we can afford to pay is not what area private schools or public schools can offer. Those ways included giving signing bonuses for new teachers, offering low cost rent options using property owned by the Church but no longer used, and offering merit bonuses. I continue to believe each of these is an effective outreach and have used each in my ministry as a Catholic school principal.

Since writing that article, I am now principal of a new school in a new diocese. Unlike my previous diocese, this one does not have a “diocesan pay scale” from which I must pay teachers. Nor does my school’s Board of Trustees dictate a pay scale for our school. Instead, the Board approves a line item in the budget for “salaries” and I have complete freedom within that budget to pay teachers as I see fit, depending on their value to the school and the “market forces” at work for their particular position.

I have found this lack of a prescribed template extremely liberating, and truth be told, in the best interest of the school I serve. In my previous school, I often lost out on the battle for a fine teacher candidate, simply because the salaries I could pay that person paled in comparison to what others were offering. I didn’t go down within a fight, however! I would often “scaffold” his or her salary offer by including a laundry list of non-teaching stipends (coaching, extra-curricular clubs, etc) as a means of approximating market rates. I won some and I lost some. But the truth is, I was waging battle beginning with the self-inflicted wound of a pay scale that worked for some disciplines but not for others.

Let me be specific. Catholic schools have always had the greatest difficulty securing and retaining good science teachers, especially in the physical sciences (Chemistry and Physics). The reasons are simple: What a young graduate in the physical sciences can make in the corporate/business world dwarfs what Catholic school pay scales usually dictate for first year teachers. Depending on the source, the average beginning salary for a person with a B.S. in Physics in the corporate world is between 45K and 60K whereas most Catholic school pay scales currently begin in the high 20’s or low to mid 30’s. And that gap widens as that person gains experience as a scientist! By contrast, when we have an open position in English or History, we are overwhelmed with highly qualified candidates, some with PhD’s, most who are willing to work within the salary scales common to our schools.

Let me guess what some of you may be thinking: Is it just to pay some of our teachers more than others? Are we saying that the cracker-jack English teacher is less deserving of higher wages than teachers in our science department? I’d say “No, the cracker-jack English teacher is not less deserving.” But let me quickly add: If a school has a true maestro teaching English, they’d be wise to compensate that person generously, because they are a rare and great gift to the school! And in a school unconstrained by a pay scale, such maestros can be rapidly rewarded by higher than average increases in salary in successive years of teaching. But I believe it is foolhardy to insist that the beginning teaching salaries for English and Physics teachers should be the same. Once they’re in the fold, without a pay scale to hamstring them, principals can make rational judgments about relative worth and adjust salaries accordingly down the road.

In the world we live in, those with science degrees get paid more than those with degrees in Arts and Letters. As an Arts and Letters guy myself, I was painfully aware of that reality when I decided to major in theology, and reminded of it every time someone asked me “What are you going to do with a theology major, become a priest?”

Insisting on a common pay scale artificially inflates what we need to pay some incoming teachers, or (more commonly) artificially deflates what we should offer others. Abolish pay scales. They don’t help us.

The key to academic achievement

2011-03-24T11:25:00.011-05:00

Because I am a high school principal, I am often asked by parents of younger children what kids need to "know" in order to be successful in high school. "What can we work with our kids on now," they ask, "which will make the biggest difference later?"

I often respond "Read to your child, and instill a love of reading in them." There's little doubt that kids who develop good reading skills early in life end up more successful later on. But lately, I've also been talking to parents about an exceptionally important character trait we must help our children develop, too.

In a famous study at Stanford University in 1972, Dr. Walter Michel created a simple test of the ability of four year old children to control impulses and delay gratification. Children were taken one at a time into a room with a one-way mirror. They were shown a marshmallow. The experimenter told them he had to leave and that they could have the marshmallow right then, but if they waited for the experimenter to return from an errand, they could have two marshmallows. One marshmallow was left on a table in front of them. Two out of every three children couldn't wait, and grabbed the available marshmallow before the experimenter returned, some within seconds of person leaving. Approximately one-third waited up to fifteen minutes for the experimenter to return. Here's a simulation of the experiment done more recently, as each kid tries to resist temptation, with some amusing footage:

Funny stuff! But the real bombshell came in the follow up study years later, when interviewers measured how the kids in the original study were doing as students. Those who delayed gratification for the full fifteen minutes scored on average 210 points higher on the SAT tests than those who gave in quickly--an astonishing difference given the length of time between testings. And these same children were judged better able to handle stress and cope with frustration during adolescence. In short, they were happier young adults, with more opportunity in front of them.

As someone who has worked with teenagers the last 26 years, I don't find the conclusions of this study startling. There are marked positives in academic outcomes from students who are able to defer what is more pleasurable and complete the work in front of them. These are the students who begin writing papers earlier than the night before, who do their homework before they watch TV, who fight through boredom in school, who are willing to keep trying new approaches to solve problems and who come to tutorials when they don't understand a concept.

At the same time, the very strong correlation of delaying gratification with academic success as shown by the study--the sheer magnitude in importance of that one variable--is disturbing when one realizes how poorly we live by that principle as a society. The explosive growth of the fast food industry in the last twenty five years, the fact that the average American carries a debt of $8,562 on their credit cards (including undergraduates, without a full time job, who have an average balance of $2,200, not counting their college loans--yikes!), the emphasis on the "instant" (instant food, microwave ovens, video-on-demand, etc.) all suggest we don't delay gratification as adults, much less mentor our children in that skill!

Still, parents can make a big difference. Help them save their money. If you can still find one, the old piggy banks which require breaking the bank to access the money are useful. Force them to do their chores before lounging around the house or leaving the house to play with friends. Make sure homework is done before TV. Talk to them honestly about not being able to afford a new car, or an expensive vacation, so they see that you, too, are not able to do some of what you'd like to do. Help them understand in life, there are no "easy" buttons.

The evidence is in: teaching our children to delay gratification is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children.

Early Spring Potpourri

2011-03-13T10:57:00.007-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's talk to students on a variety of subjects on March 14, 2011

First and foremost, congratulations to our theater program for another wonderful musical, Bye Bye Birdie. It was a lot of fun to watch and I found myself laughing out loud through out the play. Macy, I thought you were astoundingly good in your first lead role. Andrew, you were terrific, as usual; you are a real natural on stage. Foster, Maria, Samantha, Andrew, Margaret, Taylor—I really risk getting myself in trouble by beginning to name stand-outs—so let me just say I thought the whole cast was excellent and the combined effect of all these outstanding performances was a very entertaining show. Congratulations, too, to the set and costume designers, both of which were outstanding, and to those students who played in the orchestra. Bravos all around!

Two weeks ago, Mr. Weaver and I visited St. Edmund’s in England and St. Mauritz in Muenster Germany. St. Edmund’s is the school we do the Loughlin exchange with that many of you are familiar with. St. Mauritz is the school we have begun a new exchange with this year, and the school that about 15 of you will be visiting this summer. We’ll have about 22 students from that school visiting us the week before and the week of Easter, so I ask that you make them feel welcome. We met them and their families at the school one night; Martin Schultz, our CYE representative, asked me to talk with them and even to quiz them on American politics. I was pretty impressed of their knowledge about us. Their English is quite good—they begin studying English very early on. They had not heard of Tennessee or Nashville, but they had heard of Taylor Swift!

I am very excited about these expanded opportunities for you to travel and hope that you will take advantage of them. Today was going to be the final deadline for the Honduras mission trip with Ms. Donovan in July, but I am asking that we extend it for two more days until Wednesday, as we do not have enough people currently to make it a “go.” It would be a shame to cancel the trip, so I ask you to talk about this with your parents. There are rare moments in our life when we have the opportunity to do something truly life changing, and if you recall Ms. Donovan’s presentation at assembly a few weeks back, I think this is such an opportunity. Think about it again and talk to your parents! Heck, you can even use this trip to get a jump start on your service hours next year!

We received some pretty exciting news last week. Governor Haslam will be coming to JPII to speak on March 29 at 7 p.m. here in this auditorium. You and your families will be invited. He will be our second lecturer in the "John Paul II Distinguished Lecturer" series. Last year, our inaugural speaker was George Weigel, who wrote the definitive biography on JPII called "Witness to Hope." It is a great honor for a school to have a sitting governor come to a school, and we anticipate a crowd, so we will need for people, including you if you'd like to come, to reserve a ticket by going on line to do so. More information on that will be forthcoming shortly.

As you know, Spring Break is next week, a time for all of us to rest and relax a bit. We’re not very good at relaxing, are we? We fill very minute with activity. But I hope you’ll truly slow yourself down some, get lots of sleep, and enjoy your friends. I pray each spring break for your safety; you may recall last year I talked about the 18 year old Notre Dame recruit from Cincinnati who was drinking and fell from a fifth floor of the hotel to his death. Those of you going to the beaches, please be careful. Girls, be wary of predators and keep your wits about you. There is a clever marketing slogan out there—“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”— as if location makes a difference in what's right or wrong or how we feel about ourselves once we’ve done something we regret. Don’t be fooled by clever marketing. In my past life in Montgomery, which is only 170 miles from the coast, I knew many young ladies that came back from Spring Break, devastated by what they had done under the influence of alcohol.

Last and not least, in the interest of good faculty-student relationships this week, I ask that you make a special effort to stay in uniform. Socks, ties, etc. Believe me when I say that monitoring the way you dress is the least favorite of the faculty’s duties, but do their jobs they must.

May you all have a good week and an excellent spring break.

Broadening Visions

2011-02-28T05:14:00.015-06:00

Pat Weaver, our director of Admissions and Development, and were in England this week, visiting St. Edmund's, the school with which we participate in the Loughlin Exchange program. It's a magnificent, old English school which began originally in Douays, France in 1563 when it was illegal to practice the Catholic faith in England. The English hierarchy, fearing that Catholicism would forever vanish in England if they did not continue to train priests, set up a monastery called "English College"in Douai, with the hope these new priests would re-evangelize England once the anti-Catholic bans were lifted. Long before those bans relaxed, however, these priests began filtering back into England to say Mass and minister to Catholics there, at great risk to their lives, since it was regarded as treason. Over 133 priests and lay faculty from English College were martyred during the span of 1563-1680, and 21 of those have been canonized saints. When the French revolution occured in 1793 and the Catholic bans in England were finally relaxed, they moved the school back to England, where it was renamed "St. Edmund's College" and has been there ever since. A school publication says quite credibly that St. Edmund's might be the institution most responsible for the fact that Catholicism did not extinguish in England altogether, something for which the school is rightfully proud.

JPII and St. Edmund's have been in an exchange school relationship since 2005, when my predecessor, Hans Broekman, began the program to honor the headmaster of St. Edmund's, Mark Loughlin, who was tragically killed in an auto accident in 2004. Since that time we've had 6 exchange visits, with happy results on both sides of "the pond" as they say here in England. It's been a fabulous thing for the students and both of our schools.

Bouyed by the success of the Loughlin program, we are now introducing a German exchange option, with a similar three week exchange with students from St. Mauritz Catholic School in Muenster, Germany. Pat and I met with the administrative team of that school on Wednesday and Thursday and all the parents and students who are coming over this spring around the Easter time (see picture, above). They're excited about the exchange, just as we are. One thing that truly stood out when we talked to these students and parents: their ability to speak English is generally very good. Communication, we do not believe, will be a problem.

These efforts are part of our strategic plan, Vision 2016 (read about it here), in which we make it a priority to expand our international travel program. We are convinced, I am convinced, that visiting foreign countries or (even better) living with families in these countries is a powerful way to broaden our students' perspectives and appreciate the distinctiveness of our own culture.

Too hard?

2011-02-20T14:08:00.006-06:00

IS JPII too hard?

This is a question that was asked of me recently—and to some extent, like the definition of “beauty,” the answer is in the eye of the beholder. “Hard” is a subjective term that varies by individual. But let’s try to break this down some and look at objective data to address the question.

Too hard for whom? Students in our honors program? Students in our standard program? Seniors? Juniors? Sophomores? Freshman?

One way to investigate the question is to measure the expectations we place on you for homework. In early January I asked you to participate in a homework survey in which you estimated how much homework you did. We received 203 responses, with a good cross section from each grade level. My thanks to all of you who took the time to do the survey.

Let’s look at the results together (See chart by clicking here.)

On average, the typical JPII student did just over 120 minutes/night of homework. Freshman did the least, about 100 minutes, whereas juniors did the most, just over 144 minutes/night. It will probably be no surprise to you that girls at JPII worked longer per night than boys, an average of 130 minutes to 112 minutes. We wanted to measure the differences in expectation between students in the honors/AP programs and those in the standard programs, and although the honors program students worked a bit longer, the differences are not as pronounced as you might have guessed: Seniors in AP work 16 minutes longer than seniors in non-AP, juniors work 23 minutes longer, sophomores 25 minutes, and freshman 11 minutes longer. If you’re mostly all A’s, you work harder than your classmates, but that’s not terribly surprising: Senior A students work 13 minutes longer than the average honors kid and 29 minutes longer than the average standard program, junior A students work 165 minutes/night, 12 minutes longer than other honors students and 35 minutes longer than other junior standard core students, whereas A sophomores work 11 minutes longer than other honors and 36 minutes longer than standard track sophomores. Freshman A students actually work less hard than honors students generally and only 5 minutes more than students in the standard program.

My general sense in reading through each of these surveys is that you took it seriously and your answers reflect your honest estimates of you time. If there is any bias, it’s probably that you slightly over-estimated your time on task, as it would be common to take some breaks in a 3-hour study period, and on some days, coming home from a basketball game, for example, your regular study time is disrupted. In discussing this data with Mrs. Phillips, our Dean of Studies, we believe these numbers are about where they should be for a school that is serious about preparing students for college. Yes, there are days when you must do much more than what these averages show, and yes, some of you work much longer on average than your classmates, but AS an average, they’re about right. Going back to our fundamental question, “Is JPII too hard?” the homework survey seems to suggest “no.”

Another way to get objective data on this issue is to look at grading. Are JPII teachers too demanding in what they expect for an A or a B? What does the data show from the first semester? The average grade for guy at JPII was 84.5 and the average grade for a woman was 86. What’s interesting is those averages held across the grade levels—there was not much difference between a freshman and a senior in terms of grades. That means the average grade for both was just above 85, or a solid B. If we go by letter grades, the approximate ratio of A's to B's to C's to F's in the first semester was 10:10:5:1 , for a 3.1 average grade. In other words, there were about the same number of A's as there were B's, half as many C's and a tenth as many F's. Since those were first semester F’s and we only record yearly averages on transcripts, we expect the small number of F's to diminish even further between now and then. For a school which accepts a broad range of students, both the numerical average of 85 and the letter grade average of 3.1 suggest we're about where we should be in terms of difficulty.

Still, I am aware that these are averages and some of you work much harder than the averages suggest. Let’s take a moment to talk about that.

First, are you trying to do too much? Maybe the homework amount is OK, but when you’re trying to wedge it in between sports, extra-curriculars, service, work, friendships, it may just be that there’s not enough time in the day to do all those things well. When I look at what some of you are doing, I get tired just thinking about it. One sign of maturity is to learn how to say “no” or “enough.” What can you cut out?

Second, are you using your teachers in a pro-active way? Instead of going home and beating your brains in and wasting an hour doing so, why not go see the teacher after school? Some of you talk as if tutorials are punishment, but properly understood, they’re gifts of our teachers to help you. Unless you’re part of a required tutorial, you don’t have to stay the whole time—just go by and see your teacher about a certain problem or type problem you’re struggling with. EVERY teacher on this faculty will be delighted to help you. Just as an observation as I watch the hallways after school: not enough of you are using your teachers as a resource!

Third, are you using good study skills? I am a firm believer in working "smarter, not harder" whenever we can. There have been all kinds of studies on this, so here's a quick summary:

• Do the hard stuff first, the homework you least like to do.
• Study in a quiet place, without TV, cell phones, music or anything else likely to cause you to lose attention on what you’re doing.
• Review your notes each day for about 10-15 minutes. But of course that begs the question: Are you keeping good notes? When a teacher gives you notes for a chapter, he or she is practically telling you what is going to be on the next test. Something doesn't make sense? Ask the teacher the next day! Teachers love those kind of questions!
• When you read, take notes as you read. Both of my degrees are in liberal arts, which meant I had to read a lot of non-fiction books for class. Like many of you, I sometimes had a hard time concentrating on what I was reading, until I began to force myself to write down the main point of a page before I moved to the next page. That does 4 good things: keeps your mind from wandering, forces you to understand what you're reading, helps you remember it, and gives you something easy to study later.

Last comment: Let’s always remember that a teacher’s job is to always make you stretch a little further than you think you can stretch. It’s like a track coach with high jumpers: every time he or she clears the bar, the coach’s job is to move the bar a little higher and start training to get to that next level. In the end, they want you to jump as high as you’re able, or in high school terms, have as many opportunities as possible.

So is JPII “hard?” I hope so, to some extent. Nothing comes cheaply and easily and your futures are too important to waste away giving out A’s like they were candy. But is it too hard? No, the objective evidence suggests that's not the case.

Work hard. Study hard. And then let God worry about the rest. May God bless all of you this week.

Simple Kindness

2011-02-07T06:50:00.004-06:00

We took the Chamber Choir to Bowling Green to sing at the two Sunday Masses at Holy Spirit Catholic Church yesterday. We now have bus service—or in this case, van service—to Bowling Green each day, and we’re trying to get more people from that area to come to JPII next year. Our choir, as usual, was amazingly good. Scores of people came up to me throughout the morning and thanked us for adding so much to their Sunday liturgy. But as good as the choral program is, they’re not what makes the biggest impression on people.

In the middle of the week last week, we celebrated the signing of letters of intent of four members of our senior class: Leah Loven to play soccer at Bellarmine, Mary Leonard to play lacrosse at Davidson, Julian Virgo to play football at Austin Peay and Seth Walker to play football at Yale next fall. Members of the media were there, and their pictures and stories have now run in the Tennessean and the Catholic Register. We’ll continue to brag on the accomplishments of this senior class all the way through their graduation, but even so, those accomplishments don’t make the biggest impression on people about JPII.

There are stories on our web site about the four students who’ve recently won awards at a local art contest at Cheekwood: Maggie Finaly, was awarded a Gold Key award for her sculpture, “Balancing Act”, Katherine Roy, was awarded a Silver Key award for her sculpture, “Patricia" , Shelby Turner, Junior, was awarded a Silver Key for her mixed media piece, “Vivacious” and Cassidy Johnson, Junior, was awarded a Gold Key and named an American Vision Nominee for her photograph, “Sanctuary”. Our jazz ensemble played at St. Edwards last week and received rave reviews, as they continue to get better and better. We have a distinguished fine arts program—in the visual arts as in this case, but also theater, chorus and instrumental music—but they’re not what makes the biggest impression about JPII.

Our swimming team continues to get better and better. Having swept the Sumner County meet, both on the girls and boys side, the Knights competed at the regional level and finished tenth. Eight swimmers qualified for the state meet: Samuel Jackson, Nick Massa, John Mainland, Paige Scheriger, Madison Kolbe, Abbie Wood and Brittany Zobl. Congratulations to our swim team. But no matter what kind of success our athletic program has--they're not what makes the biggest impression.

What matters most is not spectacular, not glitzy, not newspaper worthy. It’s simple kindness to one another. Kindness. It’s when the new kid comes through the cafeteria line at lunch with no one to sit next to and someone recognizes that awkward moment and says, “Hey, sit here with us.” It’s about complimenting someone for their new glasses or haircut, or telling a person ‘good game last night,’ or ‘that was an interesting comment in class’ or saying something nice about someone when other people are talking poorly about him, or standing up for someone when he or she is being harassed, or noticing when someone is having a bad day and asking “you OK?”. These things are not profound, but they make a HUGE difference in the lives of the person being treated kindly. And they make a HUGE difference in the culture and aura of JPII.

Our tongues have the power destroy other people, but also the power to heal and build people up. Let's be kind to each other this week.

Catholic Schools of the Future

2011-02-04T22:43:00.013-06:00

Note: This talk was given to Catholic businessmen and women of Nashville at their monthly breakfast on the occasion of Catholic schools week, 2011.

Thank you for inviting me to speak with you this morning.

Last week, we celebrated national Catholic Schools Week, and so I’d like to stay on theme this morning by talking about Catholic Schools of the Future. To do that, however, allow me to talk briefly about Catholic Schools of the Past.

Imagine the following:

You’re a business analyst, hired by a national company to address these alarming trends :

• In 1960, the company had approximately 13,000 franchises around the country and a customer base of 5.2 million.

• By 2000, those numbers had fallen off precipitously: The company now has 8600 franchises and only 2.6 million customers.

• By 2010, it lost another 1600 franchises and an additional 20% of its customer base.

As best you can tell, there are three issues driving these numbers:

• In 1960, this company was one of the few privately held companies in its field. Over the last decades, a plethora of new privately supported ventures and new public initiatives have made the competition much tougher.

• Prior to 1960, the company was able to pull its best employees from a training center that didn’t charge the company for its training. Now the company must employ independent contractors who demand higher wages and who must be trained at company expense to attain the same skill set as the previous base.

• Each franchise must invest heavily in buildings and infrastructure to deliver its product. Unfortunately, many are now surrounded by customers unable to pay retail price because of changing demographics. The businesses are now too far away from the customers.

“What has the company done to address its precipitously dropping market share?” you ask the CEO of the company.

“We’ve counseled our franchises to look for ways to raise capital to improve their buildings and hire better employees” says the current CEO, fidgeting. “We’ve also suggested to keep their prices low and give discount pricing to those who might need it so as to keep brand loyalty.”

“That doesn’t sound like a winning formula”, you remark. “How can you reasonably expect these franchises to raise revenue for capital improvements when they can’t collect full freight for goods and services? "Let me ask it differently” you say. “What has the company done to help the franchises? ” “Well”, the C.E.O. says hesitatingly, we’ve created a national association of these franchises, and we have an annual convention to swap good ideas and conduct research that measures how we’re doing.

“It looks like your research says it's been a bad fifty years” you say. " Do you have a new business model? Have we tried to re-organize the way we do things? Or are you still pretty much delivering it the way you did fifty years ago?

“Uh… We've added some technology, but the business model is the same”.

It is impossible to imagine a company in the Fortune 500 operating this way. Their boards would have fired many CEO’s over those fifty years. The company is crumbling and yet they have no business plan, no plan for his franchises to re-structure, re-locate or try something new.

But this is exactly the state of Catholic K-12 education in this country. From our peak enrollments in the early 1960’s, we’ve lost more than 60% of our student population and closed 6,000 of our schools. In the last ten years alone, we’ve lost 1600 of those schools and 20% of our student population. (NCEA, Annual Statistical Report on Schools, 2009). Just last month the Archdiocese of New York announced it is closing another 27 schools next year—26 elementary schools and one high school.

It’s an absolute crisis. Our Church and our schools are making heroic efforts to stem the tide, but we’re tackling this crisis as if we just need to work harder and keep doing what we’re doing better.

Catholic Schools of the Future will need to consider new paradigms.

I have five thoughts about this.

My first thought: Catholic Schools of the Future are going to have to be more willing to experiment with hybrid parish-regional models of Catholic schooling. Exclusively parochial schools—schools tied to a parishes—worked very well for the first hundred years of Catholic schools, but I don’t think it’s going to work for the next 100. City demographics have changed and will continue to do so, leaving once well-positioned schools in neighborhoods that can no longer support them. And so, a kind of Darwinian evolution takes place—the strongest schools, surrounded by the most affluent neighborhoods, thrive, while the weaker schools die a slow, painful death. I think we’re going to have to look at models—not in every parish or every school, but where this makes sense—where schools need to be linked to several parishes (for an example of this kind of model, click here). It’s not a coincidence of all the schools that have closed in the last 50 years, relatively few are diocesan high schools—precisely because they are not tied to single parishes, but pull from a broad geography. Regional schools are also more able to create robust financial aid programs that help subsidize families who need it, making Catholic education more accessible.

Second thought on Catholic Schools of the Future: I think we’re going to need to experiment with our traditional K-8, 9-12 model and look at different age groupings for our schools where that makes sense. When the K-8 model formed in the late 1800’s, there was virtually no competition other than public schools and elite, very expensive private schools. Now, it’s an extremely competitive market, with all levels of private schools and magnet schools. Statistics show that our schools become vulnerable when students move into 5th, 6th and 7th grade, because at that age, our schools compete against K-12 or 5-12 or 7-12 private schools that leverage their high school facilities—libraries, science labs, athletic fields, athletic programs, down to their younger kids. I think it's unrealistic to expect that stand-alone K-8 schools can duplicate those offerings. Remember too that although we talk about K-8’s, the reality is that many of our kids are not beginning in K anymore—they're beginning in 4 year old programs or even 3 year old programs, meaning by the time the child gets to 6th grade, he or she has been at that school as long as a the 8th grader has in a traditional K-8. So I predict that nationally, we’re going to need to look at other more competitive models—perhaps, for example, distinct middle schools, perhaps locating those middle schools on the campus or in the vicinity of the high schools, tied to some sort of regional paradigm. Or perhaps we need to think about K-12 schools like our private school counterparts.

Third thought: I think we'll need to look at new partnerships between high schools and existing elementary schools, where administration teams merge to run both schools. For example, in the president-principal model typical of diocesan high schools, the president may be able to help the elementary school by using his or her development office to help market that school and professionalize that school's external image. Or more radically, in Montgomery, AL we took two existing parish elementary schools, merged them with the diocesan high school to become a "K-12 school with three campuses", renamed the school "Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School," and made the president responsible for running a single business office and development office that served all the campuses together. Each campus, however, retained its own principal, who retained the day to day administrative responsibilities (for more on this, go here). This was a more realistic use of resources than expecting each elementary school to hire its own president, run its own business office and hire its own development director. It also allowed us to do things that our parents appreciated, like giving cross-campus discounts to families with kids at both the high school and elementary campus.

Fourth thought: To attract and retain the kind of teachers we want and to offer competitive programs with our private school counterparts, we are going to have to adopt more of a college tuition model for our schools. By this I mean we’re going to have to raise our tuitions substantially, while at the same time, increase our financial aid substantially. We can no longer be the cheapest game in town—the sisters are no longer with us. Yet the most highly educated, highly credentialed teachers in Catholic schools across the nation with 20+ years of experience rarely make more than 50,000/year. Most diocesan principals make less than 70,000/year. Think about trying to support families on those numbers after being in the same career for 15-20 years. Though passing on the faith remains our most central mission, middle class Catholics expect us to also offer first tier, competitive academic and athletic programs. We cannot do so if we’re priced at ½, or ¼ as much as our competitors. Being the cheapest will no longer sustain us. So I think we’re going to have to raise rates aggressively, but while we do so, offer robust financial aid and remove whatever stigma exists about applying for it. After all, almost 80% of full time college students in this country receive some sort of financial aid.

Fifth thought Regarding these paradigm changes, let us admit that our church is not very good at changing paradigms. We’re better at preserving and caretaking than innovating. In contrast, businessmen and women such as yourself are much better at strategic planning, much more adept at modifying on the fly based on what the numbers show you, quicker to change marketing strategies if necessary, more accustomed to risk-taking, more willing to innovate.

That’s why I believe Catholic schools of the future must consider models of institutional governance that give a greater role to committed Catholic laypersons such as yourself, not just within the local schools, but at a broader, diocesan level. The archdiocese of Chicago, for example, founded a Board of Education in the Spring of 2009 to help them make recommendations for the future of their schools. The Board was hand-picked by the bishop, and reads like a who’s who list of Chicago Catholics—CEO’s, university leaders, top level Catholic businessmen and women. They’re doing amazing things—I invite you to spend some time on their diocesan web site just to get a sense of things. But here’s the biggest news: for the first time in decades, Chicago Catholic schools opened with more students than the previous year. I don't presume to have all the answers, but I think if we empower people like you to dream, innovate and lead, there are new models and new ideas that you will uncover help us implement.

Concluding thoughts:

Of this I am convinced: We have a lot to work with in Nashville. We have two remarkable diocesan high schools. Most dioceses would give their right arm to have EITHER a Father Ryan or a JPII. We have many excellent, strong elementary schools. The active presence of the Dominican nuns is a tremendous blessing to Nashville, and has lessened some of the national effects I have discussed here. With a few exceptions, we are generally healthy. But that’s precisely the time to really plan for our future, to consider new paradigms and structures—from a position of strength….not from weakness or out of desperation.

I want to thank all of you who are already involved as volunteers in our schools or those of you who send your kids to our schools. If I or Pope John Paul II can serve you or your families in any way, don’t hesitate to call me.

Thank you.

It begins with the teachers

2011-01-30T16:57:00.005-06:00

Yesterday was the beginning of Catholic Schools Week, a national celebration of Catholic Schools.

We spend a lot of time during the year bragging on you and all your successes, and in fact, we're very proud of all your achievements. But this morning, I’d like to take this occasion to focus on your teachers.

From time to time, I do parking lot duty with Mr. McLaren. One thing I can’t help noticing: some of you have some VERY nice cars. It would be interesting to calculate the average value of the car in the student parking lot with the average car in the faculty parking lot. That comparison will probably reveal what you may have been able to guess: Your teachers make a financial sacrifice to be your teachers.

They could be making a lot more money; these are smart, interesting people! Among your teachers are valedictorians of their high schools, teachers with 4.0 grade point averages in college, teachers of the year, writers of textbooks, presidential award winners, former investment bankers, former principals, former executives in business, former journalists, former premier athletes, former military men, and former university professors.

Unlike most jobs, when teachers go home to their families after a long day, they still have grading to do, prep for tomorrow’s class, tests to create, recommendations to write, emails to respond to, ball games to attend and plays to watch. Most teachers spend at least 6-8 hours preparing classes during the weekend. Most come to school early, some times to help you with tutorials, and leave late, perhaps due to some of their afternoon time has been spent with detentions or with after school tutorials.

They agonize over your failures and worry about you when you seem upset, or despondent, or having a rough time. They rejoice with your successes, cheer loudly when you beat a rival team, and watch with pride during a theatrical or musical production.

Some of you may remember that each June, I ask you to tell me what you regard as the strengths of JPII and also what you regard as areas we can improve upon. Let me share with you some of your comments you made, and see if you notice a common theme.

The strengths of JPII, in your own words, are:

The teachers are very good listeners and really help us.

The teachers are willing to take the extra time to help a student in his or her studies.

The rigorous academic curriculum is made possible by teachers who are willing to put time into helping students.

I honestly haven't thought about JPII's strengths. If I had to say something, it would have to be the wonderful teachers.

Before JPII, I never had a teacher who would stay after school to help with any of my problems in their class.

The skill and enthusiasm of the teachers is the strength of JPII.

Teachers give students plenty of opportunities to go to tutorials and get help with their work. The teachers are friendly and understanding.

I love how the teachers at JPII put an effort into making learning new concepts fun and how they’re always helpful and there if you need help with something.

The faculty and staff are just amazing. From those who have been there from the beginning, to new teachers, all seem to be linked in a drive to assist students in their pursuit of learning and academic excellence. Within the classroom, most of the teachers are unmatched on their ability to keep student interest and to convey the information for their subject. It is also apparent that the teachers sacrifice a large amount of time outside of the classroom, both for helping students and for coaching, chaperoning, and leading many clubs and activities.

An outgoing senior said: The strengths of JP II are definitely the powerful relationships that are built between faculty and students. The teachers genuinely care about whether or not their students succeed. I know I was able to develop wonderful and unforgettable connections with most members of the faculty and staff.

I think you get the picture.

So let me ask you to do something. Teachers, could I ask all of you who are in the hallways to come into the auditorium, please?

Students, I know what you’ve told me privately on these surveys. On this, the first day of Catholic schools week, could you join me in paying tribute publicly to your teachers of Pope John Paul II High School?

Am I done yet?

2011-01-23T20:33:00.007-06:00

This is Mr. Weber's address to students on January 24, 2011.

There’s a mirror along the back wall of Snap Fitness and since walking on a treadmill is tedious and boring, I often watch the trainers working with their clients. One day there was a lady who was about sixty, and the trainer was really pushing her to go beyond her comfort zone as she lifted some light weights. She kept saying, in near despair, “Am I done yet?” and he kept saying, gently, “just a few more, you can do it.”

The truth is, she looked pretty miserable the whole time she was exercising. But afterwards, when she was finally done, there was a big smile of accomplishment (and relief) on her face.

It struck me that all of us, really, underestimate ourselves. We are capable of so much more than we think we are capable of, limited by our own vision of who we are and the box we build for ourselves and operate within. We may think we’re terrible in math, and that pessimism in ourselves becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because we then give up too easily, convinced that the Math course we’re taking is too hard, or that a problem is beyond our comprehension.

Much worse than that, I have known people who were convinced that they were fundamentally bad, irredeemable, incapable of living morally, so they lived their lives as sinners, filled with self-loathing, unwilling to believe they were worthy of being happy.

Many years ago, there was a junior girl who had the reputation of being “loose,” based on some situations she allowed herself to get into. Her life was spiraling downward: she was beginning to drink, probably dabbling with marijuana, her grades were dropping, she was fighting with her mother too often, and her friendships were changing for the worse. I called her to the office, and I think she was expecting a lecture. Instead, I told her about a freshman girl who was having a hard time and needed tutoring. “But what she needs more than that is a friend,” I said. She looked at me with sadness. “She’ll need a better friend than me, Mr. Weber. You don’t know what I’ve been doing.”

I remember getting very serious and looking into her eyes. “I know exactly what you’ve been doing,” I said. “But I also know who you are, deep down. You can help this girl. Will you help her?" I asked. You could almost see her sit up straighter. “Yes, Mr. Weber, I will.”

She became an excellent tutor, but more importantly, she became like a big sister to this girl. And by serving someone else, she was able to move past this bad period in her life and slowly become herself again. When I handed her the diploma, instead of the usual handshake, she gave me a hug. "Thank you," she whispered, "for believing in me."

God’s dream for us, his belief in what we are capable of achieving, is far beyond our own. We are limited by our own vision, unable to see in ourselves what God sees, and so we trap ourselves inside the box we create. But we need people that know us deep down, who can support us, encourage us, and challenge us, and by so doing, smash that box into smithereens.

That, in a nutshell, is the mission of Pope John Paul II. That’s the job of your teachers. I was speaking to one of you recently who said about a teacher here: “He frustrates me every single day. Whenever I think I’ve done well, he says, ‘you can do better.’ But I appreciate him, because I know he cares for me and wants me to succeed. “

That’s a fantastic compliment to this teacher, but it’s also speaks highly of the young lady who recognizes what we often fail to recognize: that those who challenge us do so because they see in us, deep down, something that we might not even see in ourselves, and that they love us and want the best for us.

So as you rewrite a paper, or struggle with a math problem, or run laps for a ball team, or come in for tutorials to get extra help because you don’t understand something, and you ask your teachers or coaches, “Am I done yet?” I hope you’ll here them tell you, gently, “just a few more. You can do it.”

Sainthood Soon!

2011-01-14T07:50:00.007-06:00

We learned this morning that Pope John Paul II, the person for whom our school is named, will be beatified on May 1, 2011. That gave me occasion, as headmaster, to "bone up" on the process by which the Church declares people "saints." Here's my quick summary:

It’s important to say at the outset that the Church does not “make” saints. Rather, it tries to recognize what God has already done in the life of an individual. And because saints are held up as persons to be emulated by all, the Church tries to set up a deliberative process that makes sure a person has been thoroughly “vetted” and is truly worthy of such recognition.

Canonization is a 3 step process, which usually can begin no earlier than 5 years after a person’s death. However, there was an overwhelming sense in the world-wide Church upon JPII’s death that we had just witnessed the passing of a truly holy person and a great man. The cry heard over and over at his funeral was “Santo Subito!” or “Sainthood Now!” Recognizing this sense, Pope Benedict waived the 5 year rule in his case—so in terms of the Church’s usual time-table, this process has moved really quickly.

The first step is a person is declared “Venerable”. A person who is “venerable” is a one the Church has recognized as having heroic virtue. Pope John Paul II was made “Venerable” John Paul II just over a year ago, in December of 2009.

The second step is to be declared “Blessed”, or to be “Beatified”. This is what the Vatican announced today. To be beatified, it must be shown that God has worked through that person to perform a miracle posthumously. The logic is if a miracle occurs, that person must be in heaven. In JPII’s case, the Church recently confirmed the authenticity of a miracle involving a French nun who prayed through the intercession of JPII to be cured of Parkinson’s disease. JPII will be beatified on May 1, 2011. It’s going to be a big deal—the Vatican expects hundreds of thousands of people to come to the Vatican to celebrate that event.

(Intercessory prayer just means a person asks someone else to pray for him or her, much the same way we might ask a member of the Church who is living to pray for us).

The final step is canonization—at that point, one is called “saint.” For that to happen, there must be confirmed evidence of a second post-humous miracle. No time table on that, but a reasonable guess is that it would happen some time within the next 2-3 years.

We'll have to start prepping here at JPII for the inevitable celebration!

Study Abroad at JPII!

2011-01-09T21:24:00.002-06:00

There’s an old joke which I have told many times:

What do you call a person who can speak many languages? Multi-lingual.
What do you call someone who can speak two languages? Bi-lingual.
What do you call a person who can only speak one language? An American.

That's funny, mostly because there's too much truth in it. The average European child, by the time he or she reaches the age of 13, has learned two or three languages, and many more than that. We are unusual at JPII in that we require you to take a language for three years (most private schools require 2), but the truth is, we hope you’ll even consider taking a 4th year in your senior year.

Why? One of the great advantages of learning a new language is that we begin to understand and appreciate cultures different than our own. The foundation of ignorance is isolation. When we are around people that think like we do, talk like we do, and share most of the same assumptions that we do, we’re often trapped inside a cocoon from which it’s hard to escape. Many colleges, for this reason, have begun study abroad programs, in which students study for a semester or a year in a foreign country, usually in their sophomore or junior year.

Our goal at JPII is to provide you a world class education. As most of you know, for the last two years we’ve been working on a new strategic plan for the school, imagining together those initiatives we should implement to further your education over the next five years. One such initiative is a foreign travel initiative: we want to offer you more opportunities to travel abroad.

Five years ago we began the Loughlin Exchange program, in which freshmen from JPII spend three weeks with freshmen from St. Edmunds Catholic school in England, and then they three weeks with us. It’s been a resounding success. Those of you who have been fortunate enough to be named a Loughlin Scholar will attest to the great experience it was, in that it not only allowed you to develop friendships with students and families from a different continent, but it also gave you new insights and broadened your world view.

Last month, we were very pleased to begin planning on a second exchange program, this time with students from Muenster, Germany. We are taking up to 20 JPII sophomore and junior students to Germany in the early summer, and they will be hosting students this spring. To date we have 17 applicants for this program, so there is still time and room to sign up, and I encourage you to do so. See Mrs. McCormack, who I have hired to help us coordinate our foreign travel programs.

Your opportunities to travel won’t be limited to exchange programs. Mrs. Wortman and Mr. Stephenson are taking some of you to Paris this spring. We’re excited about that! Ms. Donovan will be taking a group of students to the Honduras this summer to do mission work, if there’s enough interest. Next fall, we hope to sponsor a trip to Rome. We’re in discussions about trips to other countries in Europe.

I am pleased that we have a well traveled faculty here who are eager to sponsor these trips, and we’re working through a calendar of where we’ll be going over the next two years so that you can plan and save for trips you might like to attend.

Look for that calendar to be published in the near future.

Have a good week!

Be it resolved that

2010-12-28T12:52:00.003-06:00

This is Mr. Weber's New Year's assembly address to the students of JPII.

I once had a professor who must have weighed 400 pounds. I'll never forget the first day of class. He walked in the door, introduced himself and said “I know what you're thinking, but I've actually lost 1,000 pounds.”

“1,000 pounds?” I thought to myself. "Good God, you must have been absolutely the fattest man alive.”

“I know what you're thinking again,” he said with a smile. “I didn't lose it all at once. I lost weight, gained it back. Lost more weight, gained it back. I am continually trying to diet, without much success, but I figure I've lost over 1,000 pounds during the course of my life.”

I was reminded of this professor recently as I thought of all the people trying to lose weight after the holidays. The average American gains somewhere between 4-6 pounds during the holidays between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Fitness clubs capitalize on the collective guilt we all feel by advertising yearly memberships in their fitness clubs. In fact, if you go to these fitness centers during the month of January, you're likely going to find it hard to get an open exercise machine because everyone has made a new year's resolution to lose weight, and for a month, anyway, everyone is committed to their promise. But if you're a frustrated member who can't find an open treadmill, be patient! Come February, there will be plenty of spots open. No matter how resolute people are coming off the holidays, by February, almost everyone has gone back to their same old habits.

There's a lesson in all this for us, I think. Bad habits are hard to break. That's because, first of all, we are creatures of habit, and if we allow ourselves to fall into a bad routine, it's hard to break out of that cycle. From a Christian perspective, we are sinful, and so it's much easier to eat too much than it is to exercise, and flabbiness is the result.

We're beginning a new semester today, which coincides with the new year, when people make new year's resolutions. Some of you, I suppose, weren't happy with your grades from the first semester. Now rested, you are resolved to do better this semester. Or maybe you've gained a few pounds and want to lose weight. Or maybe you believe you should be praying more. Or maybe you've been too shy, too withdrawn and you've resolved to put yourself out there more. Those are good goals--worthy areas to work on.

It is, after all, our self-awareness and our ability to step outside of ourselves and be self-critical that makes humanity different from all other animals. Apes can't say to themselves "I believe the quality of my relationships with other apes within the clan has deteriorated, so I am going to try to be more altruistic over the next several months. Dogs cannot say "Though my master has been feeding me generously, I'm going to have to leave some food in the bowl for the next several weeks to lose some of this extra weight I've been carrying. It's getting to be spring, and I'll that extra spring in my step to chase squirrels." Animals are creatures of instinct, slaves to these instincts. We are part animal, and if we let ourselves go, can become slaves to our baser desires and instincts. But we are also much more than animals, imbued by God with a conscience, with the ability to discern right from wrong, able to sacrifice what may be pleasant now for our long term benefit.

That's what new year's resolutions are about, after all: putting off something pleasant in the here and now--eating fast food, watching too much TV, spending too much time on the internet--for something more important, like our good health, more success in school or better quality relationships. New year's resolutions are a good thing; I encourage you to make one. But let's learn something from my former professor and all those other people in the fitness centers right now. If all we're doing is making a private promise to ourselves to do better, the likelihood is we're going to fail in that resolution. Weight-loss organizations like Weight-Watchers understand that. Of all the faddish dieting programs out there, WW has been proven to have the greatest success. The whole foundation of their program is that you are accountable to others: every week, you must stand in front of other people trying to lose weight, get on the scale and weigh in. If you lose weight, you are cheered. If you gain weight, you are booed. So the lesson for us is make a pact with a close friend for your resolution and ask that close friend to help you. Make yourself accountable to that person, so when you begin to weaken, he or she can be there to encourage you. Perhaps that same person can make himself accountable to you for his new year's resolution. If not a close friend, ask your parent or a brother or sister.

I've asked my wife to help me lose 20 pounds. She's going to help me do this in two ways: first, she isn't going to buy stuff like ice cream. If there's ice cream in the house, it doesn't matter how resolved I am now to lose weight, I am going to eat the ice cream. Second, we joined a fitness center in October, and she's going to harangue me, when I don't feel like going, to go.

What is it you need to do? Who can you ask to help you? How can you help that other person in return? Questions worth answering.

May all of you have a great second semester. My congratulations to the seniors, who begin their last semester of high school today. I'll be praying for you that you don't quit too early--I want to hand each of you a diploma in May!

Waiting

2010-11-28T10:04:00.010-06:00

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. The word “advent” means “coming,” and of course, it’s a reference to the coming of Christ at Christmas. So over the next four weeks, we await the coming of Christ.

We’re not very good at waiting. We want everything immediately! Think about it: The fast food industry has grown exponentially in the last twenty years because people want their food quickly, and don’t have the time or patience to cook it at home. We have fast food drive-through lines because it’s way too much work to park the car, walk several feet and stand in line to order. And even with drive-through lines, if you’re like me, you become impatient if the line is not moving quickly enough! The Internet now provides us with information instantaneously, which is fantastic on one level, but dangerous on another, as it’s too easy to send off an email when we’re angry at someone before we’ve given ourselves a chance to cool down and say things we regret later or post things on a blog that are hurtful to others. We have overnight printing, overnight mailing, instant food, microwave ovens—all things that allow us to get what we want now, without waiting. If we want something and can’t afford it, no need to wait and save for it—we have credit cards! The average American adult has an alarming nine open credit card accounts and carries an average debt on those cards of $8,000. Financial experts agree it’s the worst kind of debt, too, because the average interest rate is 15%, unlike owing money on a house, where one can get loans for as low as 4% right now.

So it’s hard for us to wait for Christmas—we hardly wait for anything else. Retailers are already in the full court press mode, pushing us to get all our Christmas shopping done. I was in a local store in October, before Halloween, and they were already playing Christmas carols over their speakers! So in Church we’re singing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” but everywhere we go we’re hearing “Joy to the World, the Lord has Come. “

I want to suggest two simple things we can all do that may help us step back from the helter-skelter world of the instant, the “now” that we all live in—two things that might help us better focus on the event we will celebrate on December 25 and thus help us have a better Advent.

The first is this: Nothing helps us tune into the true “reason for the season” better than helping other people. Unless you are WAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE, many of you have lots of Christian service hours left. There’s not a better time to do it. If you’re working at an elderly home, the Christmas season is a very lonely time for many elderly, as they miss their spouses who have died, or perhaps their children who don’t visit them enough. You can be there for them. Organizations who work with the poor need lots of volunteers to serve meals, deliver presents, and work soup lines. You can be there to help. You know, it’s pretty common that we, too, can get depressed or start feeling blue at this time of year, and our tendency is to say to ourselves, “I need some time for myself”, some “me time” but that’s exactly backwards. The best way to get us out of our funk is to focus on the needs of others, to make others happy. This is a great time of year to do it.

My second suggestion to get us ready for Christmas, to help us more fully appreciate this Advent season, is to spend about 10-15 minutes/day in prayer, asking God to lead you, bringing your worries before him, seeking him for guidance on decisions you must make about college, friends, personal situations. To pray doesn’t mean we must isolate ourselves and burn incense somewhere! Maybe it just means when we’re driving to school or home from school, we turn off the radio and cell phone and have a conversation with God and bring our worries before him. We don’t lean enough on God—but unless we lean, we cannot feel him pushing back, holding us up. And so we put all this pressure on ourselves to make good grades, go to the right schools, have the right relationships, instead of sharing those worries with God and asking him to help us.

If we go outside of ourselves to help others, if we pray and lean on God during these next few weeks, I think we’ll find this Advent season, this time of waiting, will help prepare us more fully for the most important event in human history. May we use this time well.

Books By Their Covers

2010-11-14T16:23:00.013-06:00

This is the assembly address to the students of JPII on November 21, 2010.

After winning the Nobel Prize for Physics, Max Planck was in high demand to give lectures on his research. So he toured the country, driven around by a chauffer, giving essentially the same lecture. Soon he grew tired of the talk and said so to his chauffer. His chauffer said: “Dr. Planck, I’ve heard your lecture so many times I think I could give it, and no one would know the difference. “ Planck thought that was a wonderful idea, so they traded clothes, with Planck driving his chauffer to the next lecture. His chauffer, as he promised, gave a brilliant talk and received a standing ovation at the end. But what they did NOT anticipate was a question and answer session. A scientist raised his hand and asked a question. Of course, he had no idea about the answer but thinking quickly, he responded: “I am surprised to be asked such an elemental question in a gathering such as this. Why the answer is so deceptively simple, I am going to ask my chauffer in the back to answer it for me.”

There’s an interesting point to this story, I think. People can be amazingly proficient at appearing to be proficient, when in fact, there’s nothing of substance underneath. The old Canon camera commercial said it succinctly: Image is everything.

Is image, everything? Is appearance what matters? Billions of dollars are spent by Fortune 500 companies on ad campaigns that try to convince you that it does. And they’re largely successful at it. If you don’t believe me, let's do a thought experiment: “If I could convince you that the Kmart brand of generic tennis shoes were made of the exact same materials as Nike tennis shoes and were exactly of the same quality, but only ¼ the price, would you lace up your Kmarts for your next basketball game? If I could show you that Walmart brand shirts were the equivalent of Tommy Hilfigers, would you proudly wear your Walmarts to your next party?

We often pay too much attention to appearances. There was once a good looking junior boy at my old school that had impeccable manners. If you asked him a question, he’d look you right in the eye and say “Yes, sir, Mr. Weber” and he’d shake your hand very firmly. But I learned quickly, with regret, these outward manners were just a pretense. He used this act to earn freshman girls’ trust—they were so flattered that a good-looking, well mannered older boy took such an interest in them—but he would misuse their trust and cast them aside like used furniture once he had obtained what he wanted from them.

There’s a saying that “Character, like a photograph, best develops in the dark.” It’s when no one is watching that we truly reveal who we are. Ethical people don’t cheat because they’re afraid of getting caught; they don’t cheat because it’s dishonest and they’re committed to learning, not to the pretense of learning. Ethical people don’t use God’s name in vain or curse because adults may hear them and they might get in trouble, but because it disrespects God and is crude or vulgar.

Our challenge as Christians is to live privately as we live publicly—to try and be the kind of people God wants us to be even when no one is looking. Otherwise, we are just play-acting at best, or acting as hypocrites, at worst. This is what St. Paul means in Ephesians when he challenges us to live as “children of light” and turn away from the darkness.

May God give all of us the courage and grace to live our lives in the light, so that our example may encourage others to do likewise.

I Can Do All Things

2010-11-08T17:13:00.013-06:00

This is Mr. Weber's address to JPII students on November 7, 2010.

As you’ve no doubt observed, we are hosting a number of prospective families for tours of the school. Today we had “Coffee with the Headmaster” whereas tomorrow we have “Open House”. My thanks to all of you who are helping us with Open House. You are what is most impressive about JPII.

As I’ve been showing people around the school, I have come to appreciate some of the features of this school that I am now so familiar with that I otherwise don't notice. I’ll bet you’re the same way: Does anybody remember what the two Scriptural quotes are in the gymnasium and the weight-room?

In the gym: Teach me your ways O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.” (Psalm 86)

In the weight-room: “I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.” (Phillipians 4:13, note Tebow's eye patches)

I’d like to speak about both of these Scripture sayings with you this morning.

My mother, when she was 18 years old, felt like God may have been asking her to be a nun. So a few days after graduating high school, she entered the convent as a trial period to further discern if that was right for her. From the moment she entered the convent, she was unhappy. Finally, after a month of being miserable, she went to see Mother Superior, in tears: “I know God wants me here, “ she said between sobs, “but I am so unhappy.” Mother Superior smiled. “Why do you think God wants you here?” “Because I am so unhappy,” my mother said.

I think there’s a twisted fear in all of us that if the Lord really does teach us, that if we really did “walk in his truth,” we’re going to be miserable. Perhaps it’s because we remember so well Jesus’ admonition: If you wish to be my disciple, you must take up your cross and follow me.” But suffering is not the same thing as unhappiness, and we need to know the difference.

There have likely been brief stretches in your life when things were just “right”. You were staying on top of your school work. Your relationships were in good order--with your family, your friends, your boyfriend/girlfriend. You’re were going to Church and building on your relationship with God. You were getting enough sleep. For athletes, this sometimes occurs in mid-season when you get into a good rhythm coming home from practice, taking a bath, doing your homework, going to bed on time. Your life was “clicking”. And here’s the most interesting part. It’s during those times we are most happy. Our life feels right. We’re proud of ourselves!

It’s when we really screw up—when we SIN—that we’re filled with guilt and shame, weighed down, like a depressing blanket that we put over ourselves. The Christian life is a joyful life! When we “walk in the way of Truth” we are happy, fulfilled, satisfied—because we are living as God created us to live.

Look, sometimes doing the right thing is hard. When my daughter was a senior, she went to a party and came home around 9 p.m., unhappy looking. I didn’t ask—It was hard enough that her father was the principal of the school she attended--so I tried to give her some space. But I knew what was going on: she had gone to the party and there were things going on that she didn’t want to get involved with, so she left. No doubt she felt lonely, especially since she had friends involved.

Sometimes doing the right thing will make us feel lonely. But here’s the promise God makes to us. If we rely on him, “We can do all things in Christ who strengthens us. “ Ask him to help you. He will.

The Power to Heal or Destroy

2010-10-31T14:23:00.004-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's assembly address to students of JPII on November 1, 2010

Here’s a lie that people tell you as teenagers: “These are the best years of your life.” That’s simply not true. In fact, I’d go as far as saying “These are some of the toughest years of your life.” Not only are you working through all the academic demands, you’re also figuring out who you are, who your friends are, what you’re going to do with your life, what college you’re going to attend, what your major is. There’s a lot of uncertainty. Ask any adult, and if they’re honest, they’ll tell you that life gets a LOT better after high school. I promise.

One thing that makes high school life even harder, of course, is when you’re ugly or unkind to one another. There was a sophomore girl at my school some years ago who was very pretty, very popular and generally respected as a moral person by her teachers and classmates. Sometime in the spring of her sophomore year, however, she got drunk at a party and slept with a number of older boys who were also drunk. When she woke up the next morning, she was horrified by what she had done, filled with guilt and shame. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Some of her female classmates, jealous of her popularity, started writing “slut” next to her name as graffiti in the girls’ bathroom. Someone else scraped into a student desk “For a good time, call” and listed the girls’ phone number. She was so embarrassed and so devastated that within one week, despite having grown up with her classmates since kindergarten, she transferred to another school. The meanness showed by those girls is one of the cruelest, most vile things I have ever witnessed in my 26 years in high school.

“Really, Mr. Weber?” “The cruelest, most vile thing you’ve witnessed?” “What about a kid who bullies another student, or steals from them, or gets a gang of his friends to beat someone up? What about someone who sells drugs to another student? Surely doing physical harm to someone is worse than simply talking about them?”

But here’s the second lie that you’re often told, and we learn this early on as kids on the playground: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Not true—again, it’s almost the opposite. A far more accurate saying would be “Sticks and stones only break my bones, but words cut through my heart.”

What you say about each other and what you say to each other has lasting, deep impact, either for good or for bad. The right comment of praise or support to a person who is struggling through a difficult period can be healing; the well-aimed cruel comment to this same person can be permanently crippling. Our tongues, much more so than our muscles, have power to build up or destroy.

I have always said that we're a great school, and I believe that. But here’s the acid test of what kind of student body you are: What do you say about each other—and especially, what do you say about those persons in your class that may be a little unusual or different, who don’t fit the norm?

I’ve given you an example of student behavior that I labeled vile. Let me give you a brief, but opposite example. There was a senior boy about ten years ago who was very effeminate in the way he talked and walked, and because of this, was often made fun of by people around the school. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the social skills to respond to that teasing appropriately, which often just made the teasing crueler. As someone told me the story, apparently during lunch a group of sophomores knocked his books out of his hands, razzing him, calling him “fag” and other things. A senior football player was walking down the hall and heard what was going on, picked out the loudest sophomore doing the teasing, pinned him up to the locker and said: “This guy is my friend, and he’s my classmate. If you got something to say to him, you say it to me and to the senior class. Do you understand?” “Uh, yeah” was the nervous response. The senior then helped the boy pick up his books and escorted him down the hall to be with the seniors. I guarantee you, to this day, that young man remembers that incident and the words “He’s my friend” as if it were yesterday.

So let’s not make the statement “These are the best years of your life” even less true than it already is. Watch what you say about each other. Build one another up. Encourage one another. These are your classmates. This is your school.

The Best Policy

2010-10-24T11:01:00.004-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's assembly address to JPII students on October 25, 2010.

So here’s a pretty common occurrence in high school: A student comes into class, smacking on gum. Especially if that person opens his mouth while he chews, it’s immediately obvious to the teacher (and everyone else). The teacher asks the student, rhetorically, “Are you chewing gum?” The student swallows the gum, again very obviously, and says “No”.

What’s the worst thing that might have happened to this student? “Please throw it away?” Maybe—a detention? Big deal, right? But what HAS happened, in this relatively trivial incident, is for a puny price, the student has sold out on his integrity to this teacher. He’s said, in effect, “I don’t value your trust, I don’t value how others perceive whether I am ethical or not. I am fundamentally dishonest.”

Many years ago there was a student at my other school who was frequently in trouble for disrupting class. We were a smaller school and there was not a Mr. McLaren, so I got to know this young man quite well. As frustrating as his behavior was, he had one redeeming trait: he would always admit what he had done. “Why were you sent out?” I’d ask him. “Well,” he said, “The teacher asked me three times to be quiet, but I kept talking. “ I’d get the written referral from the teacher which said “I asked him to quit talking three times, but he just continued.” He was a knucklehead, but I knew I could trust him.

One day, I received a phone call from a set of angry parents, claiming their daughter had been sexually harassed by this same young man. They demanded that he be expelled. The young lady had a perfectly clean disciplinary record. There were no eyewitnesses: this had happened in the late afternoon in our hallways, when there were no other students around. I spoke privately to the young lady, who was very specific about what happened—if it were true, the boy would certainly be expelled. But when I spoke to the boy, he denied it vehemently. “She’s mad at me because she likes me and I like some other girl,” he said. So it was he said—she said. The girl who was never in trouble vs. the boy who was always in trouble. But I told the boy, “As much as you’ve been in trouble, you’ve always been honest with me. I am going to rely on that honesty now. But if I find out later that you’ve lied—about this or about anything else, I will know that you’re not honest, that you’ve simply duped me, which will then causes me to revisit this matter and likely expel you. Do you understand?” “Yes sir,” he said, and “Thank you.”

I told the girls’ parents my decision and they were furious with me. A few months passed. I received a phone call from the father of the same young lady. He was so mad he could barely talk: “The same thing happened to our daughter by the same young man. You should have believed her the first time. “ I met with the young lady: “Where did this happen? When did it happen? What did he do?” She gave me very specific details. It was the same place as last time, with no eyewitnesses. But what she didn’t know was that between the first time and second time I had installed a video system that had taped the whole incident, and when I reviewed it, NOTHING she said was the truth. It was a complete fabrication—a complete lie. Instead of expelling the boy, I expelled the girl, much to the embarrassment of her family. Integrity matters. It matters in how people see you, and it matters in ways that we cannot possibly predict, as in the case of this young man.

So protect your reputation. It’s one of the most precious things you own. If you get into a situation and someone asks you a question you feel compelled to lie about, don’t. At the very least, simply say “I don’t feel I could answer that question truthfully, so I better not try.” At least, then, your integrity remains in tact.

In Robert Bolt’s biographical play of Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons, there’s a very powerful scene that relates to the question of truth-telling. You may remember the historical circumstances are these: Thomas More is Lord Chancellor of England, in effect second in command, under King Henry VIII, who wants a divorce from his wife Catherine so he can marry Anne Boleyn. The pope refuses to grant the divorce, which infuriates King Henry, so he breaks off the Church of England from the Catholic Church and declares himself as “supreme head of the Church of England” and demands that all of his subjects, including Thomas, take an oath to this effect. Thomas, in conscience, cannot do so, which causes him to be imprisoned, lose his title, his salary and his home. His daughter, fearing for her father’s life, tells him to say the words of the oath but mean otherwise to God in his heart. But More counters with this:

When a man takes an oath," Sir Thomas explains to his daughter "he’s holding his own self in his hands. Like water." (He cups his hands.) "And if he opens his fingers then — he needn’t hope to find himself again. "

When we tell what seem to be small lies, we lose our very selves, and once we begin losing our selves, it becomes easier and easier to tell bigger lies. There’s a joke out there about a man who asks a woman to sleep with him for a million dollars. She thinks about it and says OK. “Well, in that case, how about you sleep with me for $50?” She is outraged. “What kind of woman do you think I am?” “We’ve already established that, ma’am. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”

If you tell lies, even small ones, you are already establishing the kind of person you are. We’re just haggling over the details. Jesus said something similar:

"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much." Luke 16:10

No place like...

2010-10-07T16:39:00.014-05:00

So welcome back from fall break and welcome to homecoming week here at JPII! This is meant to be a week of celebration and fun together, even as we continue to do our jobs as students and teachers. We have much to be proud of at JPII and there is much to celebrate. In just our 9th year of existence—we were founded in 2002—JPII is one of the most highly respected academic institutions in Nashville, a product of your hard work, your teachers’ hard work, college acceptance rates, AP scores and many other factors.

The three big events this week are the bond fire Wednesday night (a new tradition, begun last year), the homecoming game on Friday, and the dance on Saturday. I hope all of you make plans to attend all three events.

The idea of “Homecoming”, of course, is that alumni “come home” to their alma mater, to reconnect with old friends and to remember. Our alums are still very young—the first alums graduated in 2005, which means they’re only about 22-23 years old today. We expect to see many of them at the game on Friday.

Also implied in the word "homecoming" is that school is HOME, which is not the way we usually refer to school—it’s a little odd to call it that. But consider these facts:

You go to school here from 8-3. Unless you get here as the bell is ringing (and some of you seniors have that down to a science) and you’re the first one out of the parking lot, that means even if you’re not a member of a club or on a ball team, you’re spending 8 hours/day, or 40 hours/week here. But if you DO play a sport, it’s likely you’re not going home until 6, 6:30 or 7p.m, which means you’re spending about 11 or so hours/week, or 55 hours/week total—and that’s conservative, because it doesn’t take into account your games here.

Compare that to what else you do:

• “Entertainment Media” (TV, gaming, phone and on line time= 7.5 hours/day (!), or 52.5 hours/week
• Teenagers average a measly 6.5 hours of sleep on school nights and 8-10 on weekends, which means somewhere around 48-50 hours/week.
• Average time with friends per week (outside of school time) =8
• Eating (one hour/day of “primary eating” which doesn’t count grazing in front of TV)=7
• Time with parents—30 minutes/day for mothers, 15 minutes/fathers = 5.25 /week

So in a very real way, you spend most of your life here. This is where most of your friends are. You spend about as much time with your teachers as you do your parents and even more with your coaches.

And as I watch you walk the hallways between classes, or sprawl out on the floor and do homework, or gather here for assembly or mass, as you laugh with team mates and share the ups and downs of winning and losing, experience the satisfaction of doing well in class or the frustration of doing poorly, when you compete in house games, or when I realize how well you know each other and how well you know your teachers—their strengths and their idiosyncrasies—then calling school “home”, albeit your second “home”, begins to make sense.

This is a great time of year. The summer has passed, fall has arrived, there’s beginning to be a cool nip in the air. The leaves are changing color. Just as the seasons come and go, so the seasons of our life come and go, often too quickly. Seniors, you begin your last high school homecoming; freshman, your first. I suspect you seniors are feeling a bit nostalgic remembering how it only seemed like yesterday you were also going through your first.

Appreciate this time. Revel in it. Thank God for it. Celebrate this week with your classmates and teachers. Be proud of your family—your teachers, classmates and friends.

There is, after all, no place like home.

School Pride

2010-09-19T23:23:00.006-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's address to JPII students on Monday, September 20, 2011

It may sound counter-intuitive, but watching the football game on Friday night made me realize what tremendous pride I have in Pope John Paul II High School.

I am proud of our football team and our players. They competed, especially in the second half when it was no longer a question of winning or losing—it was a question of pride. If you talk to our team, they don’t make excuses, they just go back to work—and on Saturday morning, less than 12 hours later, they were back lifting and practicing, just as they did all summer.

Vince Lombardi, legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, once said: “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” This team stands back up again and again—a tribute to them and their coaches. Watch this team, be patient. They have a winning attitude, and over time this winning attitude will begin to produce victories.

While I’m at it, I was proud of our student body on Friday night. The crowd was amazing—we literally ran out of parking on campus, and you were there until the end supporting your team. I was proud of our fantastic cheerleaders—they put on a good fund-raiser, and their cheering and stunting is always amazing. I was proud of our jazz band’s first time ever fully amplified performance with our new stage and sound equipment, so much so that I went to Mr. Suska and said “Turn them up”, which he did. Having a real band performing at our games is going to be a lot of fun as we move forward.

I am proud of this school. I am proud of you students, who do some pretty amazing things. Last week the College Board announced “A.P. Scholar” awards based on last May’s testing, and JPII students received an amazing 73 awards, including 3 “National A.P. Scholar” awards, the highest honor possible. I am equally proud of those of you who are NOT A.P. students: It’s easy to be motivated when working hard automatically yields A’s or A.P. awards. It takes guts to keep working hard when those things don’t happen. Your hard work is inspirational—you inspire your teachers, and we’re proud of you.

Work hard this week. Treat each other kindly. Make yourself a better person. My God bless all of you.

Intelligence, Attitudes and Altitudes

2010-09-12T23:21:00.009-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's address to JPII students on September 13, 2010.

The idea that our I.Q is fixed, that our genes alone determine how smart we are, has been long disproven by science, but remains a popular myth that shapes our attitudes, the way we tackle our school work, and often the way we spend our time.

When I was a senior in high school, there was a Korean kid in my Advanced Math class that became a good friend of mine. He always out-scored me on tests—he’d typically get a 98 or 99, I’d typically get an 88 or 89. Since I was competitive, this bothered me, so one day, I told him, half kiddingly, “You Asians are just better than us in Math.” I remember he became serious and asked me, “How long did you study for this test?” “I dunno”, I said, “maybe 30 or 45 minutes.” He went into his bag and pulled out a notebook and showed it to me. He had worked through every problem in that chapter, over 100 questions, on his own. It must have taken him 4 or 5 hours. “I’m not smarter than you” he told me. “I just work harder.” I remember getting defensive, probably because I knew deep down he was right.

In 1995, they began giving international tests to 4th graders and 8th graders in science and math to see how countries stacked up against each other. Out of 36 countries taking the tests, we generally come in somewhere around 10th. Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea and Chinese Tapei come in #’s 1-5. They ask the participants on this test what they believe is the most important ingredient for success in Math and Science. The #1 most common American answer? Ability, or in-born talent. The most common answer among the Asian countries? Practice, or hard work.

It's common to hear in American high schools, even at JPII, “I’m no good in Math or Science.” Unfortunately, that’s often used as an excuse not to work very hard. If I am no good at Math, we might unconsciously think, it’s the way God made me, so it’s his fault, not mine, if I don’t do well in this class. And since it’s the way God made me, there’s really no point in killing myself to try and do well. It’s just who I am.

But that’s hogwash. Yes, it’s true that some people have a greater affinity for math than others. But where ever our starting position, whatever our intelligence in a particular area, we have the capacity, with practice, with hard work, to improve our intelligence in that area. At the risk of over-simplifying brain research, the brain is a muscle that improves its “strength” through exercise, similar to arm muscles and leg muscles. When we exercise our brain, it makes more neural connections. When we don’t, it atrophies, similar to what happens when we put our arm in a cast and don’t use it for several months.

In the end, the people who are most successful in life are not the ones who are the most naturally gifted or talented, but the ones who tackle the challenges of life with the right attitude and who work the hardest.

Your attitude, and not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.

The Least of These

2010-08-29T19:18:00.006-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's address to JPII students on August 30, 2010.

This afternoon we will have representatives from many of the volunteer agencies that you support through your commitment to Christian Service. We have asked them to come out today so they can explain what their particular ministry is and give you a chance to ask questions, so that you can find an agency that you feel good about giving your time to. There’s a huge array of choices, ranging from ministering to the elderly, to tutoring young children, to working with the homeless, to supporting an inner city outreach to the poor via Saturday morning football clinics and tutoring. I ask that you take this time seriously, so that you find the right place for yourself this year.

My 21 year old daughter Cynthia spent a month in India working with a Catholic school there that teaches girls from the streets of Calcutta. Her comment coming home was that we here in the United States have no concept of the kind of poverty you see there. Walking the streets, she said, often gave her the feeling that she was violating a family’s privacy, because families, without homes, would often be in the middle of giving their kids a bath, or using the bathroom right there on the streets, or involved in some sort of intimate moment with their child. But the part that gave her nightmares was the day at the Calcutta train station she spent with a young woman who volunteered with Mother Theresa’s center for the aging and dying. It is apparently fairly common that poor families, unable to care for their parents or grandparents any longer, will abandon them at the train station between stops, telling them they’ll come back for them when in fact they have no intention of doing so. Droves of elderly men and women, without food, without anything really, sit there at the station, waiting for their children to return. Each morning, Mother Theresa’s volunteers come to try and persuade them to leave the station and come to the center, so that their needs may be cared for, but they often refuse, stubborn in their belief that their families are returning for them. So they wait hopefully, searching for their families each time people get off the train. Many in fact die there, waiting. The Calcutta police often place them back on the train, passing them down the line so they’ll be some other city’s problem.

My daughter is right: We are blessed to live in a country where we’re not so poor that we’d feel compelled to abandon our parents. But we DO have the opportunity, as part of our Christian Service Initiative, to minister to elderly who feel alone, who crave for attention, who need someone to spend time with them. Perhaps that’s what God is calling you to do this year.

Look, I understand—all of you live crazy, busy lives. When you’re taking a demanding academic load, doing homework, playing sports, involved in clubs, rehearsing for a theater production, applying for college and all the other things you do, it can often feel like the Christian service piece is just another burdensome requirement that makes your lives even crazier—another thing to cross off your list. But I encourage you to go beyond that kind of minimalist position. Since you have to do it, throw yourself into it. Invest yourself into the lives of the people you meet, give them your attention, use it as a chance to make a difference in someone’s life.

“When did I see you hungry, or thirsty, or imprisoned, Lord?” we may ask Jesus when we come face to face with him one day. " I tell you solemnly", Jesus will tell us, “what you did to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did unto me.”

FREEEEDOMMM!

2010-08-23T06:57:00.008-05:00

This day in history, August 23, 1305, William Wallace, the Scottish patriot, was executed by the English for treason.

Many of you saw the movie “Braveheart” , one of my favorite movies, starring Mel Gibson as William Wallace. At the end of the movie, Wallace has been captured, but before he is put to death, the executioner tortures Wallace, trying to get him to recognize the king of England as his rightful king. Despite being “racked” and pulled apart by ropes, Wallace refuses to honor the king and shouts instead, at the climax of the movie, “FREEEDOMMMMM!” just before he is beheaded.

Here’s a guy who is completely bound in shackles, brutally tortured, with no hope of ever escaping and death certain, and yet, in a very powerful way, he is FREE.

That’s a very different idea of freedom than most of us have today. We tend to think that “freedom” is license to do anything we want, to be unencumbered by responsibility or obligation. I am “free” if I can do as I please, when I please, to whomever I please.

But that’s not freedom so much as it is the selfishness of a spoiled child. Ironically, people who live the undisciplined life of a child, giving in to every craving and desire in the name of freedom, end up being slaves to those desires, like a dog reacting to a smell, controlled by habit or instinct, unable to order their lives by delaying gratification or virtue.

True freedom, our faith reminds us, derives from living virtuously, in discipleship to Christ. Yes, that means there are things we must be disciplined about and not do, just like a husband can no longer date other women! But as couples in good marriages will attest, being married to someone who knows you deep down and accepts you is liberating, just as living as Christ desires gives us an internal freedom that far surpasses the supposed "freedom" of living as one pleases.

So on this, the 705th anniversary of William Wallace’s death, let us remember that no matter what pressure we’re under to do something wrong, no matter the circumstances we find ourselves, we have the power to resist evil and choose what is good. If we do so, we will have a kind of inner freedom which liberates us. May we all have the courage and the grace to live as free men and women.

Struggle

2010-08-15T10:09:00.009-05:00

Last Friday, I spent some time in the basement and enjoyed observing your classes there. I’m very excited about what our science program is doing with modeling and was fascinated by the discussion in the 8th period Advanced Chemistry class as you argued with one another about the accuracy of each group's diagram. There’s good, scientific thinking going on there!

I also like comparing your habits as I visit rooms. I noticed an interesting difference between how seniors and freshman tackle math problems, which was the inspiration for this talk.

Typically freshman students have a very low tolerance for not understanding something. When you’re assigned problems, if you look at them and don’t instantly understand how to do them, your tendency is to ask the teacher to show you how. What you’re really asking of the teacher in these situations is the recipe for solving the problem—the step #1, 2, 3 way to do it.

But that’s very different, for example, from a junior or senior level Math class. Seniors understand that it is likely they WON’T instantly recognize how to do things, that it may take 5-10 minutes or so of studying a problem before they know how to do it—or maybe not, even then. The typical A.P. Calculus exam might only have 4-5 questions, so it’s obvious that the teacher expects each question to be a 10-15 minute struggle.

“Struggle” is an often misused word in our culture today. About ten years ago, there was a sophomore that wasn’t doing his English homework, wasn’t paying attention in class, and wasn’t making very good grades. His mom called me to ask that her son be taken out of class, saying that “He’s really struggling in this English class, which is really creating a lot of stress on him.” “All due respect”, I told her, “he’s NOT struggling at all. He’s not doing his homework. He isn’t paying attention in class. So of course he’s doing poorly. But that’s precisely because he ISN’T struggling to do well.”

Teachers and coaches have very similar jobs. One way of phrasing it is their job is to make you uncomfortable. It’s to challenge you to achieve a level of performance that you haven’t already obtained. The football team hasn’t been practicing in 100 degree heat because they are satisfied by where they are as a football team. They’re trying to get better. Classes should not be easy here; if they are, we probably need to bump your schedule up a bit. We want you to struggle some. "If you're growing", John Maxwell once said, "you're always going to be out of your comfort zone." We want you to tackle your classes with a kind of blue collar, roll up your sleeves, bring your lunchbox to work attitude. Struggling is a good thing; it means you are grappling with the task in front of you.

But here’s what is also very important: Our teachers are here to help you through the struggle. You are not alone. If you’re having difficulty in class, seek out your teachers and tell them. They won’t remove the obstacle—they can’t, because they are commissioned to teach a curriculum and must guide you through a certain set of standards, but they will help you overcome the obstacles if you are willing to work with them through it. Attend tutorials, ask questions in class, seek out help from your classmates. Tackle your classes with a swagger—not the swagger that pretends life is supposed to be easy, but the one that says, “I shall overcome!”

That’s what self-esteem is all about anyway. Self-esteem isn’t the result of you being TOLD that you’re great or wonderful. You see through false praise instantly. It’s about what you achieve—it’s obtained when you fight through something which is hard or challenging and come out the other side with success.

So here’s an odd way of summarizing my hopes for all of you this year: I hope that you struggle some. I hope that we can make your life a little uncomfortable.

But in the end, we're here to see you through. Lean on your teachers. Seek help. Ask for God's grace and stamina. If I can help you, some see me. One day, whether that’s next May or four Mays from now, I want to personally shake the hand of each person in this room as you receive the JPII diploma. And when you get it, I want you to know that you’ve earned it—not because it was easy, but because you fought through your most difficult classes and conquered them.

Finding a Groove

2010-08-08T08:25:00.010-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's address to students on August 9, JPII's first full week of school for the 2010-2011 school year.

Good morning. I've been speaking to a lot of last year's graduates from JPII recently. Most of them are leaving for college this week or next, including Aaron, my son, who will be leaving for Notre Dame on the 17th.

Freshman year is generally the toughest year of college--not, so much, because of the difficulty of the courses, but because of everything else. I remember there was a guy in my section of the dorm at Notre Dame--a good guy with a very impressive set of high school credentials, who completely unraveled during his freshman year. He drank on Wednesday through Saturday night, recovered from his 4 day hangover on Sunday, tried to squeeze in a week's worth of work on Monday and Tuesday, and starting drinking again on Wednesday. At the end of the first semester, he had a .8 grade point average (and it was only that high because he had P.E.) and by the end of his freshman year, despite the fact N.D. was his life's dream, he ended up having to leave the university for a local community college.

Many freshman do poorly in their first year. Why? Because quite suddenly, there's no one there to order their lives. Do you wake up in time for class? Mom isn't there to wake you up. Do you go out drinking on Thursday night? Dad isn't there to say no.Do you keep your room clean? Do your laundry? Attend classes faithfully? Go to church on Sunday? Pay your bills on time? Do your homework? All of those decisions are your own to make, or avoid making.

When we were children, our lives were structured by our parents, as was proper. Nap times, chores, meal times, homework times and bed times were imposed on us by our parents. Psychologists agree that kids are creatures of habit and need these patterns. If you have a baby brother or sister and go on trips when their sleep times are disrupted, you know what I mean. They're generally cranky and out of sorts for the entire trip. So there was security as children in the routines imposed on us by our parents: our lives had a certain rhythm; we knew what to expect and what was expected of us.

The challenge of high school, in large measure, is that you must start setting up these routines for yourself. What time you go to bed, how much sleep you're getting, how much homework you're doing, when you're doing homework, are largely your own decisions. And as tempting as it is to assume the opposite, as young adults and as older adults, we are STILL in need of a routine to function well. No, we're not babies who get cranky when they miss nap time. But we do feel it when our lives lack order, when we're "winging it" day after day, without a pattern or structure to our day. We feel out of synch with ourselves.

So this week begins the first full week of high school in 2010-2011. The preliminary classes where teachers talk about grading and homework requirements are out of the way. The introductions are over. Now is the time to figure out which routines work best for you, and once you find out what these routines are, to stick with them. Are you a bus rider? Do you find you're able to do math in the bus on the way home? Are you an athlete who gets home around 6:45 and need an hour or so to clean up, eat and wind down a bit before hitting the books at 8? Or maybe you function best, if you get home earlier, in knocking out all your work before dinner so you can relax and talk with friends after dinner? Whatever works for you, cultivate it. Practice it consistently. Find your groove.

I Dare You!

2010-08-03T22:07:00.007-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's address to JPII students on the first day of the school year.

Good morning JPII!

I hope that all of you have had an excellent, amazing summer and that you’re well rested and ready to have an excellent, amazing school year.

A special welcome to our new students-- 193 of you!—165 freshmen and 28 sophomores, juniors or seniors who are here as transfers from other schools. We’re also happy to have 10 students from Great Britain who are visiting us as part of the Loughlin scholars program—welcome to our visitors from across the pond. Also in our midst are five German students who are enrolled as seniors here—welcome! May you have a wonderful year here in America (the best part of America, I might add—the south!) We hope to get to know you better. It's going to be a great school year.

As I look out at you this morning, I see an extraordinary group of young men and women. You are scholars of the highest caliber. You are dedicated athletes. Some of you are excellent musicians, artists, or actors. Whatever your gifts, whatever your talents, whatever your passions, I hope you will pursue them with great gusto this year. We don’t want you to be average!

We all have a tendency to play it safe, to shoot for the middle, to avoid standing out. It’s like wind-sprints after practice—to keep from being yelled at by coaches, you don’t want to be the last one to finish, but you don’t want to be first too often either, because if you end up first a lot, the coaches might expect you to always be first and start yelling if you end up in the middle later on. So you run just hard enough to avoid getting noticed.

This is not, however, the attitude of the greats. Jerry Rice, legendary receiver for the San Francisco 49’ers, who is to be inducted into the Hall of Fame next weekend, not only pushed himself to finish first in every wind-sprint, but when practices were over, he was often seen running steps in the stadium on his own, pushing himself so that in the 4th quarter, he was the best conditioned athlete on the field, able to run past winded defensive backs.

John Mayer, perhaps the most talented guitarist of his generation, practiced 6, 7, 8 hours/day as a youth, perfecting his craft.

Michelangelo, the great Renaissance artist, once said this:

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting out aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low it too low and achieving our mark.

God has given you great gifts. When you use these gifts to “Be all that you can be” you honor your creator by giving back to him what he has given you. Seek his help to become the kind of person he has destined you to be, make what you know are the right choices, and if you do so, God will bless you and help you achieve your goals.

So on this, the first day of school for the 2010-2011 school year, I dare you. I dare you to be great. I dare you to aim high. I dare you to shoot for great grades. I dare you to try and be the best athlete on the field, the best actor or musician on stage. I dare you to have audacious goals for yourself. Don’t aim for the middle!

May all of you have an excellent, amazing school year.

Why I teach

2010-07-28T22:54:00.016-05:00

Note: Mr. Weber shared this reflection with the faculty of JPII at the beginning of the 2010-11 school year.

In his famous sonnet that begins "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", Shakespeare has a wonderful line that resonates with us all:

"Summer's lease  hath all too short a date."

Yes, it does!

Still, it's good to be back together with you.

Many of you many know that John Wooden died this summer. He was the greatest basketball coach of all time—few informed persons would argue that point. His U.C.L.A. teams won 10 national championships in a 12 year span, including an unprecedented 88 straight games (before losing to Notre Dame to end the streak.) During that entire run, including his 10th national championship season, he never made more than $35,000, and he never once asked for a raise!

What is less known is that he began his career as a high school English teacher. He taught and coached in relative obscurity before moving into college coaching, and would later comment that he missed the classroom teaching. When asked once by a reporter why he was so fond of teaching, he quoted this little known poem by Glennice Harmon, which I thought appropriate to begin our year together:

They ask me why I teach ,
And I reply, "Where could I find more splendid company?" 

There sits a statesman,  Strong, unbiased, wise, 
Another later Webster, silver-tongued. 

And there a doctor, Whose quick, steady hand 
Can mend a bone or stem the lifeblood's flow. 

A builder sits beside him --  Upward rise the arches of that church he builds wherein 
That minister will speak the word of God, 
And lead a stumbling soul to touch the Christ.  

And all about --A lesser gathering  of farmers, merchants, teachers,  laborers, men 
Who work and vote and build 
And plan and pray into a great tomorrow. 

And, I say,  "I may not see the church,  or hear the word,  or eat the food their hands will grow." 
And yet -- I may. 

And later I may say,  "I knew the lad, and he was strong, 
Or weak, or kind, or proud 
Or bold or gay.

 I knew him once, 
But then he was a boy." 

They ask my why I teach and I reply, 
"Where could I find more splendid company?"

We are blessed to be teachers here. May we always be thankful for the splendid company we keep.

Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame

2010-07-19T23:05:00.003-05:00

I am blessed to have three children at Notre Dame this fall: Faus, in graduate school through the Alliance for Catholic Education, Cynthia, a senior, and Aaron, an incoming freshman. For all its flaws, Notre Dame remains a powerful force for good in this world. I am proud to be a parent and alumnus.

A Modest Proposal for Priestly Life

2010-07-18T22:09:00.014-05:00

I was alarmed when I saw him.

Twenty years earlier he had been our high school chaplain and teacher. As a young priest, he was quick-witted, smart, knew us each by name, played pranks on us and received some pranks back in return. The diocese put him in charge of a camp alongside the bay that had fallen into disuse and over the summer, my friends and I spent weekends clearing out brush, painting, and mowing the grass. We loved that guy.

But the priestly years had not been good to him. He was over-weight now, without spark, a shell of the man I remembered. There were whispers of alcoholism, some stints with rehabilitation, and then, a few years later, the bomb: he was accused of illicit liaisons with teenage boys, dating back to the late 1980's. He was quickly removed from the priesthood and lived out the rest of his life in shame, dying a broken man a few years later.

I am now a Catholic high school principal. Seven years ago a young priest was sent to us for his first assignment. He had the makings of an excellent teacher: a deep knowledge of his subject, theology, with that hard to define “with-it-ness” – a quick-wittedness and quirkiness that fascinated his students. I remember once visiting his classroom as he was standing on top of his desk, peering over the ledge in mocked pain. “Rebecca”, he said, “if you don’t know the answer to this question, I’ve failed as your teacher and I’m going to jump.” The class sat on edge, hoping Rebecca would get it wrong.

He combined this talent for teaching with a zeal to serve the Lord and his Church. He attended ball games. He talked sports with the boys and teased with the girls. He heard confessions and gave thoughtful, passionate homilies. A black woman, hearing him preach one day, told me “he had the anointing”. Students loved him.

On June 28, 2005 he took his own life.

We were completely devastated. What happened? Apparently, he suffered from clinical depression. No one knew that, except a very few people in the chancery some 170 miles to the south.

I shudder when I think back to a remark he made to me a few months earlier: “When you’re in the seminary”, he had said, “you are surrounded by 30-40 guys who all aspire to the same thing: ordination. The community, the laughter, the challenge to live a holy life, is incredible. My ordination was everything I dreamt it would be, the best day of my life. The very next day, I was assigned to a parish and I was suddenly all alone.”

How many good men must we see crash and burn before we realize our model for priestly living is wrong?

Up until now, our response to the sexual abuse crisis has been primarily procedural, fashioned by lawyers to protect diocesan liability. We're doing background checks, running workshops for teachers and volunteers, and teaching children the difference between a "good touch" and a "bad touch". In the event of an accusation, everyone knows how to respond.

But we haven't attacked the problem pastorally. The root of it, echoing the words of our chaplain, is that most of our priests live completely alone. Gone are the days when rectories were full of priests, thus providing them with a kind of automatic community with built in opportunities for fraternity and fellowship. Now our parishes have typically one priest, living alone in a rectory, largely unaccountable and generally lonely--many living this way for fifty years! And yet, we're surprised, disappointed and angry when our priests become alcoholics or develop sexual problems.

No, this isn't an argument for a married priesthood. I'll let others argue that point. Instead, I am making a modest proposal: that we rethink our paradigm of how priests live. The parish rectory is an anachronism, designed for a time when people couldn't drive or talk on telephones. To see a priest, one had to walk to the parish, which was often the center of town life. But today, with cars, telephones, cell phones, voicemail, call forwarding and email, the idea of a “priest in every parish rectory” makes little sense. Instead, let us begin to insist that priests from surrounding parishes live together and share some sort of life together. Make a minimal common rule (prayer and dinner once/day, perhaps?) and then send these priests to their various ministries all over the city.

It is worth noting that although the religious communities have not been immune to the scandals, the much bigger problem has been with diocesan priests. It only makes sense: in a community with other men, destructive personal behavior can be addressed long before it becomes an entrenched sickness. But more fundamentally, the laughter, friendships, and yes, the aggravations and "opportunities" for personal growth that living in a community requires are all healthy for priests--indeed, healthy for all of us.

To A.P. or not A.P.?

2010-07-14T00:40:00.016-05:00

That is the question.

We’re asked this a lot during registration over the summer. It's typically phrased something like this: “In terms of college, should I take the A.P. class and risk a lower grade or take the easier class for the better grade?"

Take the A.P. class.

Colleges won’t tell you this outright, but the truth is that grade point averages are so inflated and differ so wildly between high schools that colleges cannot use them to make any meaningful comparisons between applicants.

Instead, they increasingly rely on two simple measurements: entrance test scores and the difficulty of the curriculum taken in high school.

Our college counseling office has been collecting data for years now that confirms the primacy of test scores: Incoming freshman at schools like Belmont or University of Dayton have virtually identical high school GPA’s as Vanderbilt or Notre Dame, but Belmont students score an average of 25 on the ACT, whereas Vandy and ND students score an average of 32.

Fair or unfair, test scores allow universities to make a quick “apples to apples” comparison of applicants, regardless of which high school an applicant attends or region of the country he or she resides.

Unfortunately, this means that some students may work very hard in high school and get all A’s, but if their test scores aren’t within range of the freshman class to which they’re applying, they have almost zero chance of being accepted, unless they possess some virtuoso talent of importance to the university (like football ability) or are part of an under-respresented group the university desires.

The second critical variable in college admissions is the difficulty of curriculum taken while in high school.

On the “common application” now required by 400+ colleges for admission, there is a telling question that must be filled out by the high school counselor:

In comparison with other college preparatory students in your school, the applicant’s course selection is (choose one): “most demanding”, “very demanding”, “demanding”, “average” or “below average”.

I believe that if the counselor must choose anything less than “most “ or “very” demanding, the student has little chance of getting accepted to an elite school.

There’s a seedy side to all this. Because publications like U.S. News and World Report rank colleges partly on the basis of acceptance rates of applicants (thus determining whether the school is “very selective” or merely “selective”), colleges do their best to encourage as many applications as possible so they can reject as many as possible. The “common application” makes it easy for kids to apply to multiple schools and thus plays into this game very neatly. Ever since the common application became—well, common—the volume of applications to the typical university has grown tremendously.

Unfortunately, college admissions offices have not grown proportionately, meaning that counselors now must look for quick, simple ways to sort through the overwhelming pile of applications on their desk. College entrance scores and the difficulty of courses become even more important in this light.

Which brings us back to " A.P. or not to A.P.?"

Advanced Placement courses are based on first tier curricular standards. A.P. teachers must attend professional development workshops sponsored by the College Board to be certified to teach to these standards. They are typically among the school's best teachers. If a child spends a year being challenged by conscientious, talented teachers who are guided by demanding standards, the reasonable expectation is that the student will acquire knowledge and skills that will help him for life—and in the nearer term, improve his college entrance scores.

And oh, by the way, the college counselor can check off that “most demanding" box!

Seven Quotes To Live By

2010-06-07T23:02:00.017-05:00

Sometimes the simple, well turned phrase can provoke our thoughts and even move us to action. Here are seven of my favorite quotes that have shaped my thinking on a variety of matters, with my brief comments after each one.

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. “ (Michelangelo)

In an age of mediocrity, our job as educators is to encourage kids to aspire for much more.

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” (John Wooden, U.C.L.A. basketball coach)

In an age where "image is everything", the greatest basketball coach of all time reminds us that character, not image, matters.

“The Glory of God is the human person, fully alive.” (St. Irenaeus)

We glorify God by using the talents he has given us to the best of our ability. God desires us to be fully human, to be fully ourselves.

“In essential things, charity. In non-essential things, liberty. In all things, charity” (attributed to St. Augustine)

There are some things, perhaps just a few, that we must insist upon. In everything else, we should respect each other's opinions and treat each other with charity.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference  between the master builder and the worker.We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.  We are prophets of a future not our own. (Oscar Romero)

We can't do it all. We are the workers. We need to let God be God.

Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man. (John Henry Newman-- The Idea of a University)

Being educated doesn't make us virtuous. We need God's grace for that.

It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom which become wore vigorous and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. (John Henry Newman, The Development of Doctrine)

We often assume that a belief is in its purest state when it is newest. But our best doctrines and ideas are those which develop over long periods of time, after they've been discussed, argued, prayed about and lived out by the community.

Time to Face the Ugly Truth

2010-05-30T23:40:00.016-05:00

Imagine you’re an analyst hired by the C.E.O. of a 130-year old company to advise him on how to turn the company around in light of this alarming data:

• In 1960, the company had approximately 13,000 franchises around the country and a customer base of 5.2 million.
• By 2000, those numbers had fallen off precipitously: The company now has 8600 franchises and only 2.6 million customers.
• By 2010, it lost another 1600 franchises and an additional 20% of its customer base.

As best you can tell, there are three issues driving these numbers:

• In 1960, this company was one of the few privately held companies in its field. Over the last decades, a plethora of new privately supported ventures and new public initiatives have made the competition much tougher.
• Prior to 1960, the company was able to pull its best employees from a training center that didn’t charge the company for their training. Now the company must employ independent contractors who demand higher wages and who must be trained at company expense to attain the same skill set as the previous base.
• Each franchisee must invest heavily in buildings and infrastructure to deliver its product. Unfortunately, many of these franchises are now surrounded by customers unable to pay retail price because of changing demographics. The businesses are now too far away from the customers.

“What has the company done to address its dwindling market share?”, you ask.

“We’ve counseled our franchises to look for ways to raise capital to improve their buildings and hire better employees” says the company C.E.O, fidgeting. “We’ve also suggested to keep their prices low and give discount pricing to those who might need it so as to keep brand loyalty.”

“That doesn’t sound like a winning formula”, you remark. “How can you reasonably expect these franchises to raise revenue for capital improvements when they can’t collect full freight for goods and services? "Let me ask it differently” you say. “What has the company done to help the franchises?” “Well”, the C.E.O. says hesitatingly, we’ve created a national association of these franchises, and we have an annual convention to swap good ideas and conduct research that measures how we’re doing.

“It looks like your research says it's been a bad fifty years” you say. " Do we have a new business model? Have we tried to re-organize the way we do things? Or are we still pretty much delivering it the way we did fifty years ago?

“Uh… We've added some technology, but the business model is the same”.

It would be hard to imagine a company in the Fortune 500 operating this way. The C.E.O. would have been fired long before he hired you as his analyst! His company is crumbling and yet he has no business plan, no plan for his franchises to re-structure, re-locate or try something new.

But this is exactly the state of Catholic K-12 education in this country. From our peak enrollments in the early 1960’s, we’ve lost more than 60% of our student population and closed 6,000 of our schools. In the last ten years alone, we’ve lost 1600 of those schools and 20% of our student population. (NCEA, Annual Statistical Report on Schools, 2009) It’s an absolute crisis—and yet, we seem resigned to allow Darwinian evolution to take its course.

I have three proposals for re-inventing ourselves:

1) First, abolish the pre-K-8 elementary school structure. Kids are beginning in our schools at the age of three or four, which means by the time they get to 6th grade, they’ve been there as long as 8th graders who used to begin in kindergarten. They’re itching for something new! Coupled with the fact that our K-12 or 7-12 competition leverages the athletic fields, libraries, science labs and prestige of their high schools to attract incoming 7th graders and our elementary schools simply can’t compete.

Instead, create Catholic middle schools in grades 7-8 or 6-8 and make Catholic elementary schools preK-5 or preK-6. Or if building a new middle school is too expensive, move the seventh and eighth graders into the high school and make it a 7-12 institution. Either of these options would make the Catholic school much more attractive to sixth and seventh graders, which is where most of the attrition occurs.

2) Build new schools in high growth areas, regardless of their effect on neighboring schools. In my diocese there are two mega-parishes on the north and south end of town without schools, surrounded by declining parishes with schools. As painful as it is to do so, the long-term health of Catholic education depends upon putting our schools in the right spot to attract the most families and then allowing God’s providence to take care of what transpires. Otherwise, in the name of protecting institutions, we end up ministering to fewer and fewer families in the aggregate, and our schools close, one at a time.

3) We must become more entrepreneurial. We must hire first tier business managers with market sense and savvy. We cannot expect over-taxed principals, most with no formal business training, to lead our schools in this way. If a school cannot afford such a person, schools should share resources and hire a talented person to help run 2-3 schools at a time. The pool of talent for this may be broader than we think if we look for successful businessmen looking for a second career who would be interested in serving the Church.

As an example of this entrepreneurial leadership, we should be giving out much more financial aid than we are. According to U.S. News and World Report, there are only 46 colleges in the United States that say they meet the “full financial needs of all their students.” I propose--radically-- that all Catholic schools do so. But wait, this isn’t touchy feely idealism! If we have seats that are empty, we’re much better off filling them with students who pay 50% tuition than keeping the seats empty and getting nothing. This is the same principle upon which airlines discount their seats for less traveled flights.

I can think of other examples for exploration along these lines: Have we considered leasing buses to transport kids to our school to drive up enrollments? How about out-sourcing cafeteria service? What about purchasing textbooks on line? Does our spirit store deliver product in an efficient way, thereby helping us brand the school? Is our webpage sharp, up to date and an essential part of our marketing plan? Have we considered signing bonuses to draw talent into our school despite meager annual salaries? Have we negotiated with empty convents or rectories to provide low-cost housing to young employees?

“The definition of insanity, ” someone said, “is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” We must face the ugly truth and begin to act sanely.

Thanks, JPII!

2010-05-19T11:35:00.005-05:00

Aaron graduated from JPII on Sunday, the third of my children to have graduated from the school at which I am principal. As it is for most parents, it’s bittersweet for my wife and me: We are bursting with pride for our son, but we also know our relationship has forever changed and that he’s leaving soon.

Aaron will enroll at Notre Dame this August. He’ll leave behind a lot of the laughter which has animated our family since he was two years old and learned he could make his older brother and sister laugh by performing silly stunts and saying funny things. That wit is perhaps his best trait and has served him well in making new friends at JPII.

The transition wasn’t easy. He was most unhappy when I told him after his sophomore year that we were moving up to Nashville so I could be headmaster. He had lived his entire life in Montgomery and was quite comfortable with the friends he had known, many since kindergarten. “I’d rather digest pine cones” was his opening line to the “Why do you want to come to JPII?” essay required of all incoming students, until his mother made him march upstairs and rewrite the whole thing. “They’re probably going to accept him anyway,” I had told her. “I know, but I want him to go there with the right attitude,” she had said back. He came down the stairs thirty minutes later, sulky. “The reason I want to go to JPII, “ he wrote with obvious sarcasm, “is that it’s the best school in the country. With a degree from JPII, I can go anywhere and do anything.” His mother looked at me, undecided. “He’s probably going to be accepted, “ I reiterated. We decided to let it go.

Fast forward two years. What a blessing JPII has been for our son! He’s always been good at music, having received his first drum set at the age of ten. He can play the guitar and piano as well. At JPII he’s found kids who are equally talented and passionate and spent many hours in our basement recording music with them. Though a back injury has slowed down his high school athletic career, he was able to play football his entire senior year and was named team captain by his peers. He used his experience in Mock Trial and Youth in Government in Alabama to help promote the program at JPII and even became the youth governor for Tennessee this year. He connected with literature while taking A.P. English from Mr. Stephenson and was able to expand his gifts in writing and interpretation without feeling awkward or effeminate. Betty Mayberry so challenged my son in A.P. Calculus that he arrived to school obscenely early for tutorials twice/week, just to make it through, and is a better student and person for it. He sang in Mrs. Ebelhar’s choir and played in Mr. Suska’s jazz ensemble. He even was able to take a year of Latin! As part of his Christian Service, he worked in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s patients.

This extraordinary, well rounded experience, I believe, was instrumental in helping Aaron get into Notre Dame. As a “double domer” from ND myself, with two older children already there, I’m both excited for him and deeply grateful to his coaches, teachers and classmates.

Thank you, JPII.

Flood!

2010-05-02T21:04:00.006-05:00

The destructive power of water has been awesome and frightful to behold these last few days. I tried to get into JPII on Sunday afternoon, but Caldwell Drive was underwater, making passage into the school impossible, as seen here:

Our lacrosse, baseball, softball and soccer fields were completely submerged, as you can see here:

When the waters recede from our playing fields, it's going to be one ugly, muddy mess.

Only the roofs could be seen of our neighbor’s homes alongside Vietnam Vets (look carefully in the middle right of the video below):

Please pray for our neighbors, as they likely lost everything.

God has a way of reminding us he’s still in charge. It’s easy for us to forget that. When it gets too hot outside, we have air-conditioning. If it’s too cold, heating. We have erected towering skyscrapers, conquered the airways, landed men on the moon and sent unmanned spacecrafts to Mars and beyond. These achievements reflect our intelligence and ingenuity, but they also tempt us to believe we sole masters of our fate, able to control all that is around us.

The most poignant story for modern man in the Old Testament may be the Tower of Babel. “Come, let us build ourselves a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves”, they said. Upset by their pride, God gave them different languages, confusing them, causing them to discontinue their empire building.

I don’t mean to say that all successful people are unduly proud. But success can seduce us, if we’re not careful, into believing we are no longer in need of God’s grace and assistance. If there are “no atheists in the foxholes”, as the saying goes, then the opposite is also true: there are too few believers among the affluent and successful.

Most of us have been merely inconvenienced by this weekend’s flooding. Let’s pray for all those who have truly been hurt by it. For all of us, however, may unexpected weekends like this one remind us that we are not the Creator, but the created.

Now the Green Blade Riseth

2010-04-04T17:04:00.008-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's Easter message to the students of JPII, Monday, April 4, 2010

Matt was a 291 pound, 6’ 6” football player, regarded as one of the top lineman prospects in the country. After being pursued by Florida, Penn State, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and many other colleges, he committed to Notre Dame and was set to enter Notre Dame this summer as their highest ranked incoming recruit. This past Friday he was on spring break in Panama City with 40 of his classmates from St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati. Tragically, having drank too much, he leaned over the rail of the fifth floor balcony to talk to someone the next room over, lost his balance and fell. He died instantly.

This isn’t a talk about drinking.

Instead, I ask for your prayers for his classmates at St. Xavier, a Catholic high school very similar to Pope John Paul II. Matt was just 17, due to turn 18 next week. You can only imagine the grief and the sense of loss his friends, classmates and family are experiencing right now. Please pray for them and the entire Xavier school community.

Some of you have undergone tragedy yourselves, experiencing the sudden loss of someone close to you through an accident or an illness. Others of you have endured lesser but still painful things like divorce, or your father or mother leaving the family, or betrayal by a close friend. Inevitably, when we are suffering through these terrible things, we ask ourselves—as no doubt all of Matt’s friend’s are asking—“Why me (or why him)? Why does God allow this to happen? Why not someone else who’s a jerk and has it coming? In fact, why does it seem like good people suffer more often than evil people? Is God paying attention? Does he care? "

To our Christian faith’s credit, we don’t believe there are easy answers to those questions. “God is testing us” or “God has a plan” are far too simplistic—and from the perspective of Matt’s family or others enduring a tragedy, I imagine, almost obscenely perverse, as if God needed their son to be a sacrificial lamb as a teaching tool for others.

What comes much closer to the truth, I believe, is revealed in the season we are celebrating during this Easter season. At the height of Jesus’ suffering on the cross—betrayed by one of the 12 closest to him, denied by his good friend Peter, turned over to Rome on a trumped up charge by his religious leaders, convicted by his own people, who shouted “Crucify him! Crucify him!” and begged Pilate to let a murderer be released instead of him, scoffed at and ridiculed by the Roman guards--now on the cross, with pain searing through his wrists and feet, Jesus’ cried out “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.?” or “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

The message of the cross, I believe, in response to why God allows suffering, is that God suffers, too. The grief and suffering we feel is real—not something we should pretend is just a matter of perspective. He doesn’t tell us not to feel betrayed or cheated—he himself felt that way. He doesn’t promise us, like some child’s fairy tale, that we’ll “live happily ever after” in a life free from pain. He doesn’t offer some cheap medicine to make it go away. No, Jesus shows us on Good Friday that suffering is inescapable. The pain we feel, the grief, the sense of loss are all legitimate expressions of our human condition.

But he also shows us, through Easter Sunday, that this suffering does not get the final say--that despite the cross, there is also the resurrection, that despite whatever hardship, tragedy, and hatred we endure, that God’s love for us is even more real, deeper and more powerful. From the frozen earth of winter, green blades of grass can rise again. *

I’d like to end with a true story:

It revolves around a small boy of about seven who was stricken with a fatal, ferocious and fast growing cancer. He had been treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering with every sort of therapy known to science. But nothing further could be done.   Perhaps they could administer one more dose of some experimental drug, but actually there was no real hope of recovery. And the side effects could only complicate the progression of the disease.   So the family and the doctors gathered in the little boy's room for a final conference concerning his treatment.

They had tried almost everything, what could they possibly think of next? Finally the boy spoke up in a clear, crisp voice, "What I really want to do is to go home and learn how to ride my two wheeler."   The bicycle had been a Christmas present. It had those little trainer wheels attached. But before the boy had gained enough confidence to remove the trainer wheels the cancer caught up with him and he was sent to the hospital. Learning how to ride a two-wheeler was the last thought the doctors or the parents would have contemplated. It just didn't seem possible. The boy was already physically weakened, why encourage him to do something that clearly would not be possible for very long even if he could succeed.

 But the boy insisted and the resistance of the doctors and his parents melted away under the withering assurances of his clear brown eyes. And home they went.   Not thirty minutes after they had settled in, they were out in the yard, the boy insisting that his father take off the training wheels and let him have a go at it.   Obediently, but anxiously, his father took out his wrench and removed the training wheels to let him go. To their surprise, after only two false starts and one fall the boy was able to steer the bike, somewhat erratically to be sure. "And now," he said with mounting assurance in his voice, "Now I want to ride it by myself all the way around the block." Before anyone could stop him, he was off, up the street and around the corner out of sight. There were those few minutes of suspense as the parents, brother and little sister, waited for him to appear at the other end of the block, and after what seemed an eternity, there he was, headed for home, a gigantic expression of triumph and satisfaction written on his face.

When the excitement had settled down, the boy retired to his bedroom, and asked if he could be left alone with his little sister. He had his father bring the shiny blue bike into the bedroom. It sat there in the corner, a gleaming symbol of life. Then the boy turned to his little sister and said, "I won't be needing the bicycle anymore. I want you to have it for your birthday. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did."   

From under the shadow of death, and in the midst of life's deepest tragedies, there comes the resurrection of life.

Happy Easter, everyone!

* The title of this blog comes from the song, "Now the Green Blade Riseth". Here's the text:

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

In the grave they laid him, love whom men had slain,
Thinking that never he would wake again.
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green,

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain.
Quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Thy touch can call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

JPII: Five Years After

2010-04-02T10:20:00.006-05:00

Today, April 2, 2010, marks the 5th anniversary of the death of our school’s namesake, Pope John Paul II.

There are now 12 high schools in the United States, with a 13th being built in Huntsville, that are named “Pope John Paul II High School” or “John Paul the Great High School”. I believe it’s a just another hint as to what history will prove: John Paul II was one of the two or three popes of most consequence in the history of our Church.

To celebrate this fifth anniversary, our school invited Mr. George Weigel to speak to our community as part of our “John Paul II Distinguished Lecturer” series. Weigel is best known for his authoritative biography on the life of JPII, entitled “Witness to Hope,” and thus knew him as well as any American. I asked him to speak to us about the legacy of JPII for our current and future church. Accordingly, his talk was entitled “The Ten Enduring Achievements of Pope John Paul II”.

A summary of his talk follows (my gratitude to Board member Diane Huggins for this summary):

1. JPII recast the role of the papacy by returning to the evangelical roots of Peter. He was not a “central administrator” of the Vatican but first and foremost a pastor. This is what led him to make 105 visits to foreign countries, to begin World Youth Day, etc.

2. His influence on the Second Vatican Council, helping it focus on a “Christ centered humanity”. He was instrumental in writing “Gaudium et Spes”, perhaps the most important document of the Council.

3. His central role in the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War. He was a pivotal figure in the 1989 revolution, beginning with his support of Solidarity in Poland and ending in the tearing down of the Berlin wall.

4. Correspondingly, his challenge to democracy: Democracy is a means and not an end. It is measured by how well it promotes the common good and supports human dignity, especially the dignity of its most vulnerable members.

5. His focus on ecumenism and unity in truth. He was instrumental in re- invigorating many ecumenical dialogues. His “Ut Unum Sint” encyclical puts the Catholic Church on an irrevocable path toward unity with other Christian faiths.

6. His efforts to strengthen Jewish-Christian relations and to reconvene the dialogue/conversation with the Jewish people for the first time in 1900 years.

7. His teaching that truths lead us to God and that we embrace the truths of the world of science, philosophy and other disciplines.

8. His theology of the human body and its relationship to moral life in response to the sexual revolution. He re-invigorated traditional Catholic moral teaching and gave it a persuasive, innovative foundation.

9. His Catechism of the Catholic Church. He called it a gift to the future of our Church. The very idea that a faith could be codified in an age of relativism was radical in and of itself.

10. His impact on lives throughout the world. How many hundreds of millions of people did his life inspire? His funeral was called by NBC news "the human event of our generation”.

It’s always a dubious enterprise to try and measure the historical “greatness” of someone who died such a short time ago. Still, I suspect we’re on solid ground in predicting that Karole Wojyla was one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, and JPII, one of our greatest popes.

Sainthood is just a matter of time.

Honor and Duty

2010-03-28T18:52:00.006-05:00

Editor's note: The following remarks were made by Mr. Weber at the March 28 induction ceremony for NHS at JPII.

A children's tale tells of a land in which a castle of valiant knights protected the people of a forest plagued by dangerous giants. These knights had silver shields created by a magician, and a knight’s shield would shine brighter the more good the knight did in the land. However, if a knight were lazy or cowardly or vain, the knight’s shield would become increasingly cloudy until the knight would be ashamed to bear it. In rare cases in which a knight showed exceptional valor and devotion to duty, a golden star would appear in the center of the shield.

One day dangerous giants gathered together to try to drive the knights from the land. Seeing their preparations, the lord of the castle gathered his knights together to ride out to battle. Young Sir Roland had only recently acquired his shield, and dreamed of distinguishing himself. But the lord of the castle ordered him to stay behind and guard the gate, to prevent anyone from entering the castle until the knights returned.

Sir Roland was very disappointed, but stood at the gate to do his duty. Eventually a lone knight rode up wearily, shield dull. The knight offered to trade places with Sir Roland, and let Sir Roland seek glory while the knight would guard the gate. Sir Roland almost leapt at the chance, but realized he had promised to stay at his post, and so he refused the offer.

In a while, an old woman approached the castle, begging for food. She said she had been near the battle, and that the knights were doing poorly. She mocked the young knight for being afraid to join his companions. Sir Roland gave the woman food, but resisted the temptation to prove to her his bravery by doing something he had committed not to do.

Next, an old man in a long cloak appeared across the moat. The man claimed to be a magician, and to have a magic sword with which Sir Roland could save his friends from destruction if he would leave the gate and join the battle in the forest. Sir Roland was so tempted that he had to move back and raise the drawbridge to cut himself off from the strange man. Suddenly, the “magician” threw off his cloak, and began to grow. He turned into a great giant, and howled at Sir Roland in frustration before turning back to the forest.

Eventually the company of knights rode back, tired but victorious. As they approached the gate they stopped in wonder. There, shining on Sir Roland’s shield, was a golden star. Some knights did not understand how someone who had not fought in battle could earn such honor. But the lord of the castle knew, and explained that some of the hardest battles of all are not against an armed foe. In disciplining himself to do his duty, Sir Roland had fought the hardest battle of the day.
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On behalf of the teachers and staff of JPII, I want to congratulate all of you who have been chosen to become part of JPII’s next National Honor Society. I am not sure there is a greater compliment that your school could give you than to recognize you publicly as people of honor. On behalf of the school, thank you for the example you have been. And parents, they don’t get to be the way they are by accident—thank you for helping them become people of virtue and leaders in our school.

The legend of Sir Roland is interesting, because it reminds us that being honorable isn’t so much about achieving fame or “status” among one’s peers. Sir Roland, a young man, desired to establish himself as a great knight by going to battle and performing heroically. Instead, he was asked by the lord of the castle to stay back and defend the castle, a seemingly demeaning job, which turned out to be both difficult and important.

Being honorable most often is not about being a superstar or a hero. It’s about doing your job, fulfilling your duty, being true to your word in the ordinary, everyday grind of your life.

For students at JPII, it’s about keeping your commitments, being honest in your relationships, doing your homework, being on task in class, leading peers to do the right thing when faced with the temptation to do the wrong thing.

A few moments ago, you took a vow that said you promise to “advance forward the welfare of the school.” This vow reflects an ancient view that understands that a society is only as strong as the virtue of its citizenry. All great civilizations have understood this. In ancient Greece, Athenian youth took a similar vow:

We will never bring disgrace on this our City by an act of dishonesty or cowardice.

We will fight for the ideals and Sacred Things of the City both alone and with many.

We will revere and obey the City’s laws, and will do our best to incite a like reverence and respect in those above us who are prone to annul them or set them at naught.

We will strive increasingly to quicken the public’s sense of civic duty.

Thus in all these ways we will transmit this City, not only not less, but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.

Students of the National Honor Society of JPII, may you leave the city—or in this case—JPII—greater and more beautiful, a better school, than it was transmitted to you. You are clearly on your way to doing that by virtue of your selection to NHS. My charge to you is to continue in that goal until your graduation.

Congratulations again.

Of Ski-Jackets and Relics

2010-03-16T23:07:00.007-05:00

The ski jacket of Pope John Paul II now in our hallway will soon become a relic when the pope is canonized--a near certainty, it's just a question of when. In light of that fact, it may be helpful to review what Catholics believe to be true about relics and distinguish that from what is often misunderstood.

Relics are not talismans or charms that possess some sort of magical power. That’s superstitious nonsense. Rather, they are memorials to saints—visible symbols or signs that connect us to them.

In my office is a picture of my grandfather. He is important to me because he was our family’s first educator—a professor of orthodontics and chairman of the department at the University of Tennessee. My father, following in his footsteps, became a professor of physics, whereas I became a high school teacher and later a school headmaster. Every Friday, my grandfather would take his graduate students to lunch, forging a very close professor-student relationship that was most unusual for students at that level. His picture on my desk reminds me that I do not wish to become an office bureaucrat—even though I am the headmaster, I want to know students personally. This is, in fact, one of the reasons I have always taught at least one class in the 21 years I’ve been principal, president or headmaster.

Similarly, Catholics venerate (respect) relics to remind us of what was good and noble about the saint and to inspire us to strive for those same ideals. In our case, we have a wonderful relic in the ski-jacket, reminding us that Pope John Paul II, for all of his saintliness, also enjoyed being outdoors. He loved to ski, and reportedly dressed up in disguise and went snow skiing in the Alps over 100 times while pope. He also played soccer, was an actor, a poet and an avid kayaker. He, too, would take his graduate students on outings, kayaking down rivers, and at the end of the day would set up camp, turn the kayak upside down as an altar and celebrate Mass with his students.

The ski jacket display reminds us that Pope John Paul II was a very human person, who loved life and all that was good about it—nature, having fun, enjoying the company of close friends. Yes, he was a scholar, with two PhD’s. He spoke 8 languages fluently. He was the most prolific writer in papal history, with over 15 encyclicals, and was deeply respected as a world-class theologian. But he also loved life, laughed a lot, cherished his friends and enjoyed his time away “from the office”.

May John Paul II’s example inspire us to cherish life as fully as he did.

Begin by Descending

2010-02-21T22:12:00.003-06:00

This is Mr. Weber's assembly address to the students of Pope John Paul II High School on February 23, 2010

After the president stepped down from the podium, unhappy with the speech he had just given, he said: "It's a flat failure. That speech won't scour." Even within the address itself, he had said "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here."

Of course, President Lincoln was wrong. The "Gettysburg Address" is remembered to this day as one of the greatest speeches of our history. The occasion for the speech was the 1863 dedication of a national cemetery to bury the 7,500 killed in the Battle of Gettysburg some four months earlier. What is not well known is that despite the fact he was the sitting president, President Lincoln was not invited to be the main speaker for the dedication ceremony--a rather obvious slight. By 1963, there was a rising anti-war sentiment against the Civil War and many people blamed Lincoln for not bringing the war to a quicker conclusion.

Instead, the keynote speaker for the dedication ceremony was Edward Everett, a U.S. senator and president of Harvard University. Everett's speech, which was given just before Lincoln's in the program, lasted two hours. No one remembers it. President Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" took two and a half minutes to deliver and has been remembered ever since.

Taking my cue from Lincoln, I will here make only one comment, which comes from St. Augustine:

"Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. Do you plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility."

Education Far Beyond the Classroom

2010-02-14T10:48:00.010-06:00

Good morning. I hope everyone had a great weekend.

The next month is going to be pretty incredible here at JPII.

Tonight we kick off our INK and BLOOD exhibit, which traces the history of writing and the development of the bible from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the modern translations of today. In our library are now housed 5,000 year old cuneiform clay tablets, fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, considered the most important archeological discovery of the 20th century, illuminated manuscripts dating to the middle ages, large Torah Scrolls that are over 800 years old, a working replica of the Gutenberg press and too many other amazing things to list here. It is a WORLD CLASS, museum quality exhibit, and we are humbled and blessed to have the privilege of showing it to all of Nashville and expect many to travel distances to see it.

Tonight will be opening night. We're inviting various dignitaries around Nashville to attend--a black tie affair. My thanks to all of you who have volunteered to make tonight special with your talents in music and art. Beginning tomorrow, we'll start having bus loads of students from area schools come to the exhibit in the mornings and three night times/week. On Monday and Thursday evenings and Sunday afternoon, we're also inviting the general public. We not only want to show the visitors Ink and Blood, we want to showcase our school and even more importantly, showcase you. For the next three weeks, I ask that you are especially hospitable to our guests, whether they be adults or 7th graders. You may bump into them in our bathrooms, find them wandering lost in our hallways, perhaps even eating in our cafeteria. Please stop what you're doing and make them feel welcome, give directions if they need it, and at the very least, smile at them as you pass by.

The most important audience to view the exhibit, however, is YOU. Dr. Noah, to whom we are indebted for this exhibit, especially wants this to be an opportunity for you to learn first hand about our history, both as Christians who read and hold sacred the Scriptures, but also as heirs to a culture that has been shaped by the biblical writings. The exhibit will be closed to us in the mornings, but I certainly invite you, if our visitors have left, to peruse the exhibit on your own or with your friends at lunch time. Remember to keep decorum when you're there. Yes, it's our library. But for three weeks, anyway, it's a museum housing world class artifacts, and I ask that you act accordingly.

You are welcome to peruse the exhibit during your lunch period. For the next week or so, if there is a high demand, we'll give seniors priority admittance, then juniors, sophomores and freshmen. (Sorry freshmen, but you'll be seniors one day.) The exhibit will be closed at dismissal each day to clean up and get ready for the nighttime tours. In addition, each of you will be visiting the exhibit formally in your theology classes over the next three weeks. My advice to you is to sponge it up! You will get very few opportunities like this again.

Looking further down the road, there's some other fantastic things that are going to happen at JPII this spring. April 2 marks the fifth anniversary of our namesake's death, Pope John Paul II. Usually, the cause for canonization cannot begin until the fifth year, but Pope Benedict waived the five year wait requirement for JPII shortly after he became pope and rumor is that JP2 may be beatified on April 2. Beatification is the step just below sainthood. It would mean Pope John Paul is "Blessed John Paul II" on his way to becoming "Saint JPII". Down the road, we may even have to change our school's name from "Pope" to "Saint". In any case, this fifth anniversary is a big one, and since we're named after him, we've lined up two events to celebrate it. We have invited one of the country's most famous theologians to speak at our first "Pope John Paul II Distinguished Lecture" series. His name is George Weigel. Among Mr. Weigel's many accomplishments, he wrote THE definitive biography of JPII, called "Witness to Hope" and he'll be speaking in this auditorium the night of March 9. You're invited to come.

Also that night, we will be unveiling something that's really interesting. When JPII was built in 2002, Bishop Kmiec--the bishop of Nashville just before Bishop Choby-- asked the Vatican if it would give us something that belonged to the pope to connect us to him. Some of you may know that the pope was an avid skier and while pope, often dressed up in disguise with his friends to go skiing in the Alps for vacation. So we were delighted when we received from the Vatican the pope's ski-jacket, which we have now made into a very nice display just outside the chapel. I think some of you may have seen it as it was going up, but we've since veiled it and will unveil it the night of the Weigel talk.

So there's some pretty spectacular things happening around here this spring. Soak it in and thank the Lord for the many blessings he's given us here.

Fides et Sapientia

2010-01-18T20:47:00.003-06:00

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” (Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 1998)

These words capture our highest aspirations for our students at Pope John Paul II High School. By coming to know truth in all of its beauty , students come to know God, and in so doing are inspired to become the people he created them to be.

Students are immersed in a rigorous liberal arts course of study, including 3 years of foreign language and fine arts. Tutorials are offered for students who need extra help, whereas those who demonstrate aptitude may take honors courses and AP courses for college credit. Our fine arts program affords students choices in choral and instrumental music, as well as the dramatic and visual arts. Students are encouraged to join a large variety of athletic teams, clubs and service organizations.

The lens through which our school's life is focused is our faith. Through the study of Scripture and Doctrine, students discover the ancient and universal truths that bring synthesis and meaning to their lives. Through Christian service to the less fortunate each year, they are inspired to love God through others. Through prayer, weekly liturgy and worship, they are invited into a deeper relationship with the Lord.

Faith and reason, John Paul II reminds us, are the “wings” upon which the human spirit rises. May our students learn to soar!

"The Glory of God is the Human Person Fully Alive."

2010-01-18T20:43:00.007-06:00

Imagine a school where the state’s 100 meter track champion sings in the Advanced Choir, where the captain of the football team is also the youth governor of Tennessee, where an all state soccer player performs in the school orchestra, where honor students mentor younger students struggling in their studies and where students serve the needs of the less fortunate each year as part of the core curriculum.

Imagine a high school where students take foreign language and fine arts for a minimum of three years, a school whose students have earned over 150 A.P. Scholar awards over the last two years, where students come to school early and leave late to receive extra tutoring from their teachers, a school where students are encouraged to think, to ask questions, and to challenge assumptions.

Pope John Paul II High School was founded in 2002 for the purpose of building Renaissance young men and women. We believe, with St. Irenaeus (pictured), that "The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” When students stretch to become scholars, when they strive to be the best singer, the best artist, the best athlete, the best person they can be, they glorify God by using the talents he has given them. Therein is their fulfillment and happiness. We want nothing less for them.

Lives of Daring Adventure!

2010-01-10T16:02:00.003-06:00

Our hockey team is once again excellent. Currently they’re 12-0-1 and atop the GNASH standings, having just beaten Centennial 9-2 on Friday night. I was able to see them play on Wednesday night against Ravenwood—a very good team—which they tied 2-2.

I am always amazed when I watch a hockey game how gracefully hockey players skate. They’ve been skating for so long now it has become second nature to them, almost like running or walking. Watching them, you’d think skating was easy, but if you think that, you’ve never tried or forgotten the first time you did try. Even the most gifted athlete, the first time they try it, will look and feel like a klutz. The first time I tried to skate I was about 27. I clung to the bar around the perimeter of the ice rink, holding on for dear life, but even that didn’t stop me from having five or six spectacular busts. And it doesn’t help when you’re struggling to your feet, trying to preserve whatever vestige of manhood you have left, that little 6 and 7 year olds go blazing past you, backwards, forwards, spinning. I used to be a pretty good athlete, but I sure didn’t look or feel like one that afternoon.

The first time we do anything is usually the hardest. Girls, if a guy calls you up and asks you out and he sounds pretty smooth, don’t think he hasn’t practiced that phone call privately 15 or 20 times and worried about that phone call all day. If you’re going out for a sport the very first time, the most difficult day is the first practice, because you don’t know how you’re going to stack up, and you don’t want to look like a fool next to your peers. If you’ve never spoken in front of people before, it takes courage to do so, and you’re likely going to fidget and stutter the first time you do.

We have a tendency to avoid the unknown. It’s a human tendency—most of us don’t like taking risks. And yet we know that taking risks is necessary for a healthy life. Fellas, assuming we don’t want to live our lives all by ourselves, we’re going to have to make that phone call or ask a girl directly to go out with us at some point. If we’re ever going to play a sport, we must go through a first day of practice and if we’re ever going to give a talk, there’s always that first time.

High school is a time to take some risks. I’m not talking about bungee jumping or parachuting, but the risk of exposing yourself in the classroom by raising your hand to give a really good answer (even if your friends may tease you for it), or really striving or an A and not the path of least resistance, or hanging out with a different group of people because you have more in common with them than your old friends, or joining a new club, or even starting a new club.

I think too often we judge the quality of a school by ACT averages and college admissions. Yes, our student body does very well by those measurements. But there’s another measure, maybe a more important one: how creative are you? How innovative? Are you mindless automatons, doing whatever the masses do, or are you a risk taker, someone willing to be ridiculed for doing something new? What new, amazing clubs could we be sponsoring if there were someone willing to risk starting something new and willing to ask teachers to be the moderator?

With the two snow days and the weekend, I’ve been inside my home now for almost 4 straight days. I’ve started to feel a little claustrophobic. The truth is, when we don’t break out of what is safe for us, what is "home", our lives begin to feel a little claustrophobic, boring, dull. Take some risks. Bust it a few times, like I did that first time skating. So what?

Helen Keller once said: “Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing.” May you all lead lives of daring adventure!

Raising Teenagers: Not for the Faint of Heart

2010-01-08T17:12:00.012-06:00

One advantage to working in a high school for 25 years is I've met some pretty incredible parents. With four children of our own (now aged 22, 20, 18 and 14), my wife Diane and I paid close attention to how these parents raised their children and shamelessly stole ideas from them. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Here are some of the things we've "borrowed" that have worked well for us:

1) We’ve tried to say “no”. A mother I once knew received a Christmas present from her five children when her youngest child was a senior in high school. It was a plaque, inscribed with the words “World’s Meanest Mother”. The text of the plaque listed all the things she never let them do that “everyone else’s mother” did: stay out past midnight, go to senior prom parties where there would be drinking, miss school on days because they were tired, etc. And at the bottom of the plaque, they concluded with the simple words “Thank you Mom, for loving us so much”. I believe that kids want their parents, deep down, to set limits for them, much the same way we admire the teachers or coaches in our lives who held the line with us.

2) We’ve tried to pick the right battles. As a father I’ve failed on this more often than my wife—something about having a son with long hair is annoying to me! But hair length doesn’t matter. Hard work matters. Integrity matters. Treating people with respect matters. The art of being a parent with teens is to be flexible on the small stuff and give them some room. As one wise parent once told me. “Teenagers are like bucking broncos. If you try to ride them, their natural instinct is to buck you. Instead, parents should build fences that give the horse some freedom, but which lead them to the right place." This may be the single wisest statement I've ever heard about raising teens.

3) We don’t let our kids spend the night with friends. Ever. As a principal I’ve observed that if teenagers drink (and the stats say 70% do!), it’s most often when they’re overnight with someone else, not accountable to their own parents that evening. What they often do is play a shell game: each teen tells his parents that he’s staying at the other one’s house and then both spend the night at a third person’s house whose parents aren’t home or who don’t care. Drinking is a huge temptation, even to the very best kids. Do our children like this policy? No, they hate it, but it gives them an excuse to say “no” when tempted and it helps shield them from the more serious stuff. They’ve survived.

4) They can’t quit something once they start. All four of my children have been on terrible teams with poor coaches. Doesn’t matter, they can’t quit. If they finish the season and never want to play that sport again, that’s fine (my oldest quit playing baseball at 11, which killed my soul because he was good). I remember once talking to a cheerleader who decided to quit the cheerleading squad in mid-season. I expressed concern to her that she often gave up on things and encouraged to her to finish the season out‐‐it would help her in more important things in the future like college, a job, a future marriage. Her mom was furious with me. Sadly, 15 years later, I heard she’s divorcing her third husband.

5) We’ve tried to be faithful to family prayer. Beginning when our children were young, we’ve tried to pray as a family before getting ready for school. It was never “high church”! Our standard routine was to make each kid offer thanks (“Thank you Jesus for…” when our kids were younger), read Scripture (our family uses the Church’s readings of the day), offer any special intentions, and then finish with an “Our Father or Hail Mary”. The whole thing takes about 5 minutes. Even now, with our two youngest in high school, we continue with this tradition.

6) We’ve had to say we’re sorry and tried to be open to changing our minds. Sometimes we make the wrong decision and rather than “stand firm” as a pretense for infallibility, we’ve had to change course and sometimes ask our kids to forgive us. It seems like I am in this position more often with my lawyerly daughter than my boys, but she’s right to press me sometimes--I tend to be overprotective of her. Being parents of teens is not for the faint‐hearted!

Older parents always told Diane and I when our children were young, in dark and ominous tones, “just wait until your kids turn into teenagers”. The truth is, raising teens has been great. There is no greater joy than watching your children turn into young men and women, to laugh with them as young adults, to smile inwardly when you recognize a point of view or quirk that was passed from you to them (but don’t acknowledge it out loud with them!), to see God’s grace living with them, pushing them to be the men and women he intends them to become. Do we have perfect kids? Hardly. But it's not their fault--they don't have perfect parents!

The truly hard years, we’ve come to realize, were the years of being on‐call 100% of the time when our children were in diapers. To those parents, Diane and I have this to say: The best is yet to come!

Some Assembly Required

2010-01-03T14:03:00.004-06:00

This is Mr. Weber's first address to the students for the 2010 year.

What is the worst three word phrase you might read while opening Christmas presents?

"Some Assembly Required".

If you're like me, you never want to see those words on a present someone has given you. It's not just that I don't like to fix things (I don't). It's because inevitably, the instructions on how to do the assembling are very poorly written and hard to follow. At some point, and my kids will attest to this, I will crumple up the instructions in frustration, look at the picture on the box and try to do it myself. I remember putting a wood swing set together for Aaron and Daniel when they were very young: It took me all day. True to form, about half way through, I chunked the directions and finished the project using what I thought was "common sense". When I got to the final step, which was simply to stand the swing set right side up and hang the swings from the top beam, I realized that the holes on the beam for hanging the swing were upside down, pointing straight up in the air, which meant I had to disassemble most of what I had done and start over. Aghh!

I've learned, through trial and error (and error!), no matter how cryptic the directions, it's better to try and follow them. In the end, we'll build a better swing set and be happier with the final product. We may get frustrated along the way, it may seem easier and tempting to take short-cuts, but we'll likely have to redo things over and over unless we're following the manufacturer's instructions.

In many ways, our lives are like presents--some assembly is required. One of the great gifts that God gives us is that he doesn't create us as finished products. He allows us to assemble ourselves over the course of our lives: to become the person he's destined for us to be. But like me putting together a swingset, we often try to take short-cuts to get there, not reading the manual, skipping steps, not abiding by the manufacturers' instructions. And the result is we often make ourselves miserable, either creating ourselves to be much less than the finished product God had designed us to be, or by redoing over and over the steps necessary to get there.

God shows us how to live. He gives us Scripture, he gives us the teachings of the Church, and he gives us consciences that tell us right from wrong. These are the "manufacturer's instructions". They are sometimes difficult to understand and perhaps more difficult to live by, but if we commit ourselves to following them, we are happier with the results.

New years are traditionally times when we look at our lives and commit ourselves to doing one thing that will make us better--the so-called "New Year's Resolution". Fitness clubs swell in new memberships in January as people commit themselves to lose some weight, prompted no doubt by the guilt they feel with all the food they've eaten since Thanksgiving. Since none of us are perfect, there are areas in all of our lives where we've gone off script from the manufacturer's instructions, keeping us from being the kind of people God wants us to be. I encourage you not to let this year pass by like all the rest, but commit yourself to just one thing that you know will make you a better person: Perhaps it's to study more, be a better friend, be a better son or daughter or older sister or brother, read more, take your Christian service more seriously, whatever is the right thing for you.

I'd like to make a new Year's resolution for JPII as well, and ask that you join me in this. We're sloppy. Those of you who came in on Saturday just before break will attest to how much garbage and litter was in our parking lot. It's also too often in our hallways, in the cafeteria and around our grounds. I'd like us all to pledge to be better stewards of this place--that we'll care more about how we leave it for others. I pledge that as I walk the hallways and see litter, I'll pick it up and throw it away, and I ask all of you to do the same. I am so proud of this school, of you students, of you teachers. I don't want anyone getting the wrong impression of us. Please join me in doing a better job keeping this place looking sharp.

Happy New Year!

Love Thee Notre Dame

2009-12-16T16:24:00.005-06:00

Aaron, my third child, received word today he has been accepted to the University of Notre Dame for the Fall of 2010. He follows his older brother (class of 2009), his sister (class of 2011) and his father (B.A. 1984, M.A. 1985). Notre Dame, for all of its flaws, is still a magnificent Catholic university and a major force for good in this world. I am grateful for the role it has played in my family's life and thrilled for Aaron. My thanks to the teachers of JPII, Montgomery Catholic Preparatory and St. Bede School who have given him this opportunity.

Making the Crooked Straight!

2009-12-06T18:06:00.006-06:00

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.

A voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight his path! Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads will be made straight and the rough places plain, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Isaiah 40:1-3)

This is the text from the prophet Isaiah, proclaimed by John the Baptist from our readings in Church this Sunday. Preparing for the Lord is the very heart of what we’re called to do during advent. The word “advent” originates from the Latin word “adventus”, which means “coming” and is a translation of the Greek word, “parousia” commonly used in reference to the second coming of Christ. So the season of advent for us is both a reminder of the original waiting of the Hebrews for their Messiah as well as the waiting by all of us for the second coming of Christ.

To fully appreciate the power of Isaiah’s words, we need to remember the situation the Hebrew people were in at the time Isaiah’s proclamation. The date was roughly 550 years before Jesus’ birth. Israel was now an occupied territory. All that was sacred and important to the Hebrews—their country Israel, their holy city Jerusalem (Zion), their temple, the ark of the covenant—all signs of God’s presence among them, all reminders of their historical liberation from the Egyptians by Moses some 700 years earlier—the Babylonians had destroyed. In an attempt to annihilate them as a race, Babylon took the Hebrew families and split them apart, exiling (or sending away) mothers, fathers, sons and daughters to different countries, most of whom never saw each other again. The once proud nation led by King David and Solomon some 400 years earlier, the one whom Yahweh had covenanted his love and protection, was no more.

One can forgive the Hebrew people, under these circumstances, for losing faith in God. For years, prophets had warned them that if they did not turn back to him, the worst could happen—and now it appeared that it had. God seemed to have abandoned them, given up on them and walked away.

At this time of deep despair, at their lowest low, God sent the prophet Isaiah to them with words of hope:

Take comfort! Your warfare is over, your suffering done, your sins have been paid for, there is one coming who will make things right. Prepare the way for this person. This world you know, filled with so much suffering and sorrow, will be turned upside down: Every valley will be exalted and every mountain made low. For you shall soon see, because of this person, the salvation of God.

It’s hard for words alone to capture the power of Isaiah’s message and the excitement of how it would have been received from a people in despair. We need music for that.

George Frederic Handel, A German-English composer in the 18th century, wrote the famous Messiah oratorio in 1741—most of you know its most famous part—the Hallelujah Chorus. The Messiah is perhaps one of the best known and most often performed choral pieces in the word. In the part I am about to show you, the singer quotes from Isaiah the exact passages from Isaiah I’ve read to you—but as you listen to it, I want you to imagine what it was like for the Hebrews to be told their suffering was finally over.

Before I play this piece, two notes:

First, Mrs. Eberhar would likely scold me if I didn’t point out that this piece is one of the best examples of word painting, sometimes called text painting, in classical music. Word painting is when the music reflects the literal meaning of the words being sung. So, for example, ascending scales would accompany lyrics about going up. Notice the how the tenor sings "exalted". See how many other examples of word painting you notice.

Second, I am aware this isn’t the type of music you’re likely to load up on your i-pods and play in your cars. But the sign of an educated person is to be open to new ideas and new things, whereas the ignorant person closes himself down to anything new. I have confidence in this student body that you fall in the former and not the latter category.

Listen to this three minute clip:

That’s a very famous rendition from the London Philharmonic.

As we prepare for Christ’s coming, both in remembrance of his birth in Bethlehem over 2010 years ago and in anticipation of his coming again, may we take comfort in his assurance that we shall one day see the salvation of God.

Word Power!

2009-11-18T01:03:00.013-06:00

The English language is always evolving. Each year, the Oxford Dictionary publishers pick a “word of the year”--a new word they believe reflects a thematic idea for the year. This year’s choice, recently announced, is the clunky, “unfriend”. Facebook users know exactly what this means: to remove someone as a friend on a social networking site. What is interesting about that word is the prefix “un” is usually used with adjectives (unacceptable, unappealing) and although there are certainly some “un” verbs (unpack, unburden), the word “friend” is not used as a verb, so to use “unfriend” as a verb is highly unusual, and likely what intrigued Oxford dictionary folks enough to pick it.

Narrowly missing out on the 2009 word of the year were a variety of other new words or phrases, among them:

• “Intexticated” (distracted because one is texting on a cell phone while driving a car—as in “Friends don’t let friend drive intexticated!”)

• “funemployed” (taking advantage of being laid off from work by having fun)

• “zombie bank” ( a bank which is virtually bankrupt but kept afloat through government bailouts)

• “tramp stamp” (a tattoo on the lower back)

Merriam-Webster also publishes a word of the year. If one goes back over the last 5 or so years, one can track major themes for those years. For example, in 2005 the word of the year was “integrity”, chosen that year because it was the most looked up word in Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary. Ironic, isn’t it, that as steroids rocked baseball, as ethical scandals in Congress and in the corporate world were rampant, that people had to look up the “integrity” to see what it meant!

Similarly, in 2006, the word of the year was “Truthiness”, which means believing what you want to believe in your gut, rather than what is known to be true. Again, I find it telling we’ve created a word that really means “my opinion”, and cloaked opinion with the authority derived from the base word “Truth”. Truth, at its deepest level, means “that which is” rather than “that which I perceive” but it should be no surprise we confuse the two given the influence of relativism.

In 2007, Merriam’s word of the year was “wOOt”, expressing joy, whereas in 2008 the word was, not surprisingly, “bailout”, reflecting the efforts of government to rescue many companies from financial distress.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Words are alive; cut them and they bleed”. Using exactly the right word for a paper, invoking a clever turn of phrase in conversation or using a choice sarcastic word to cut someone down to size is immensely satisfying. Words are living things which have the power to create and inspire and the power to destroy. In a culture that watches too much TV, which Alec Baldwin in the Hulu commercial reminds us turns our brains into a cottage cheese-like gelatinous mush, let us re-dedicate ourselves to reading and writing so that we may be able to create and appreciate excellent prose.

Let me leave you with a brief example of spectacular writing from one of the all time great essayists, John Henry Newman. Newman is arguing against the enlightenment assumption that being well educated makes one morally virtuous. Rather than simply saying “No, because the temptation to sin is part of the human condition, regardless of how well educated one is” he writes:

Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with silken thread; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man. (John Henry Newman, “The Idea of a University”).

Now that is writing! May we all aspire to use words as well as Newman did. Work hard in your English classes!

Much expected

2009-11-15T19:01:00.004-06:00

To whom much is given, much is expected” (Luke 12:48)

Jesus said that, but when I was in high school, my father repeated this phrase to me often. He was fond of reminding me of this phrase whenever I was a little too proud of something—maybe a good test score, a good report card, or playing a good basketball game. I can almost hear him say, as he did many times, “Consider your talents a gift from God, but be sure to use those talents for the sake of others.”

I was watching the Titans play Buffalo yesterday. Buffalo recently signed Terrell Owens as a free agent receiver. “T.O” is regarded as one of the most talented receivers in the game, a physical freak of nature at 6’ 3’’, 225 pounds who can run a 4.35 forty. But he also has a reputation of being a prima donna, concerned more about himself than the welfare of the team. Sure enough, yesterday, when things began to unravel and the Titans began to take control of the game, T.O. began yelling at his teammates and coaches on the sideline. No one questions his prodigious talent. But there are few NFL teams that want Owens on their roster, because he tears down team morale and draws unnecessary attention to himself. In other words, Owens has been given much, but he’s using his gift selfishly.

You, too, have been given much. Most of you come from solid families and they sacrifice to send you here. The education you receive here will catapult you forward in your life. Most of your peers growing up in Nashville don’t have the opportunities you have today, nor will have these opportunities in the future, whether that’s to attend a prestigious college or land a lucrative job one day. Compared to others you live a privileged life.

How will you return this gift to the Lord? Will you use the advantages you’ve been given only for yourself, or will you parlay them into a life makes a positive difference in this world for others?

And in the here and now, in your life around this school, this building, the hallways, our cafeteria, will you be grateful for what you’ve received? Gratitude can be shown in small, practical ways, like an out of the way kind comment to a teacher or classmate, like keeping our hallways and cafeteria clean from trash, like taking an unpopular position with your peers because it’s the right one to take, by simply being a good listener to someone who needs to talk.

God wants us to be happy. The best way to be happy is to use the natural talents God has given us to the best of our ability. But that alone isn’t enough. We must use those talents to serve others, not ourselves.

Students at JPII, you have been given much. Rejoice and be grateful for your talents. Return those talents back to him in service to others and you will indeed live happy and fulfilling lives.

Men, Women and Etiquette

2009-11-08T20:23:00.005-06:00

I grew up in Mobile, Al on the Gulf Coast. Being a southerner, I was taught by my parents that gentleman are expected to treat women a certain way. For example, you always opened doors for women. But that was down south. The first time I opened a door for a woman when I was a freshman at Notre Dame in northern Indiana, the woman glared at me and said in a very irritated voice, “I can open the door for myself” and slammed the door behind her as I stood there, confused.

These are confusing times for men. For this reason, I was happy to recently come upon an article by Amy Bickers in Southern Living magazine, called “15 Ways to Charm Her” (July, 2009) —a guide as to what southern women expect of men. Fellas, I read this article for your benefit. Women, see if you agree.

Here’s what Ms. Bickers says:

Want to impress a Southern girl? Just think "What would my grandfather have done?"

Number one: We still expect you to give up your seat for a lady. On a bus, at a bar, on a train. . . we don't care where you are. Unless you are at a restaurant and the only lady in sight is the one taking your order, stand up. Now.

On a recent Friday night at a bustling restaurant bar, two friends and I waited for our table to be called. The bar stools were occupied so we stood patiently, sipping wine and chatting about the workweek. When a couple nearby stood up, another woman - who had been there less time than we had - swooped in, reaching across us to put her purse on the stool. This isn't the worst part. It's what happened next: Her male companion then slid onto the other bar stool.

Hang on while I do a geography check. Are we not in the South? If ladies are waiting for a seat and you have a Y chromosome, do you sit down? No, sir. No, you do not.

We know modern life is confusing. The roles of men and women have evolved over the years.

But come on, let's keep some things old-school. My late grandfather- he of the East Texas upbringing, U.S. Navy captain status, and Cary Grant good looks - would never have allowed a woman to stand while he sat. And if you want a Southern woman to love you, neither will you. So, men, here's a short list of things Southern girls still expect from you.

We still expect you to...

[2] STAND UP FOR A LADY.

[3] Know that the sec has the best football TEAMS IN THE NATION. Big 12 fan? Hmm, perhaps you should keep walking.

[4] KILL BUGS. Enough said.

[5] Hold doors open.

[6] FIX THINGS OR BUILD STUFF. I once watched in awe as my stepfather built a front porch on the house he shares with my mother. He knew just what to do, cutting every notch, hammering every nail. The project was complete by sunset.

[7] WEAR BOOTS OCCASIONALLY. Not the fancy, l-paid-$l,000-for-these kind. We're talking about slightly mud-crusted, I-could-have-just-come-in-from-the-field boots.

[8] Take off your hat inside.

[9] Grill stuff.

[10:] CALL US. If you want to ask us out, don't text and don't e-mail. Pick up the phone and use your voice.

[11] Stand when we come back to the dinner TABLE. "Just a little half-stand is enough to make me melt," my friend Stephanie says.

[12] PULL OUT OUR CHAIRS. Wait, that's not all. Scoot them back in before we hit the floor.

[13] Pay the tab on the first few DATES. "If you ask me out, you pay," Stephanie says. "If I ask you out, you should still pay." Listen, guys, it's just simpler this way.

[14] NEVER GET IN BAR FIGHTS. Patrick Swayze might look cool in Road House, but in reality, bar fights are stupid and embarrassing. You don't look tough. You look like an idiot.

[15] Don't show up in a wrinkled, un-tucked SHIRT. Care about your appearance but not too much. Don't smell better than we do. Don't use mousse or gel. You shouldn't look like you spend more time in front of the mirror than we do.

So says Ms. Bickers from Southern Living.

Gentlemen, all joking aside, the truth is if you treat women with respect, if you listen to them and not talk incessantly about yourself, if you avoid playing the game we men often play with each other (which is to top someone else’s story with a story of your own that is even better), if you give them your genuine attention, you will be well on your way to a good relationship. My wife would add one more bit of advice: if you’re watching TV together, put DOWN the remote control. Men may like watching 2-3 shows at once. Women do not.

My grandmother

2009-11-01T19:35:00.008-06:00

This is Mr. Weber's assembly address to JPII students on November 2, 2009.

Today is All Souls Day in the Catholic Church, a day to remember and honor our deceased love ones. We pray for them today, but we also give them honor by remembering the values that they stood for and trying to make them our own.

Who in your life—a grandparent or great-grandparent, perhaps, an uncle or aunt—has died but left a mark on you in some sort of important way? I’d like you to think of that person this morning.

For me, it was my grandmother. She died 20 years ago, but we were very close. She was a little woman, only 4’ 11’’ but she was strong in stature and personality. Her mother died when she was only 3, and since her father was an astronomer (known for having their minds in other galaxies) and she was the oldest girl in the family, she had a lot of responsibility to raise her younger siblings.

They were poor, so she went to work when she was 14 to help out, keeping the books for a local grocer after school. Her younger brother was apparently brilliant but had a gambling problem, so when he went to Washington D.C. in the 1920’s for law school, her father asked her to go with him so she could keep him out of trouble. She did as her father asked, but when she got there, she decided to enroll in the law school herself---something very unusual for a woman to do—and received a law degree 3 years later. No one would hire a female lawyer in the 1920’s except for the federal government, so she ended up working for the Department of Immigration for 15 or so years. During that time she also received a private pilot’s license, something else that was unheard of for a woman, but apparently she was dating a man at the time who was taking pilot lessons, and as she had done for law school, she decided to earn a license for herself. She never married that man, however, because when she went to visit his family in Georgia, she found out that they were virulently anti-Catholic and that was the end of that.

In fact, it wasn’t until she was 38 that she met my grandfather and married—18 years later than the typical woman of her day. He was a naval officer, a graduate of Annapolis, who had been married before and had 3 teenage children, but his wife had died of an illness 2 years earlier My grandmother became pregnant for the first time at age 39 with my mother just as World War II was breaking out, so less than 6 months after her marriage, my grandfather was called to war, leaving her all alone, pregnant, with 3 teenage step children. The WWII years were tough years for her. They moved constantly to where-ever my grandfather was stationed—San Francisco, Hawaii, back to the east coast—but they saw very little of each other during that time. He was at sea when my mother was born, at sea when she took her first steps, at sea when she first went to kindergarten. But my grandmother was faithful and strong and survived. She had one other child when she was 45, my aunt, who now lives in Huntsville.

Fast forward to when I remember her. She settled in Auburn, AL, about 5 hours away from Mobile, AL, where I grew up. My grandfather died in 1968 when I was only 6, so I don’t have much memory of him, but she would visit us often, and we loved it. She’d come down for our birthdays and other special events. She’d usually take us out to eat, something we didn’t do very often and she often gave us presents for no other reason than she wanted to. I remember she drove a big Cadillac, and since she was so short, all you could see over the dashboard was her head, and that, I think, partly explained the fact she was a terrible driver. She often bragged she had never been in a wreck, which only proved to me as a kid how skilled a driver every one else on the road must have been! She never stayed with us for more than 2-3 days before she whisked back off to Auburn, and even as young child I had this sense she was a very independent, self-reliant woman. She was always interested in us. She wrote letters to us and often included checks as gifts, which made her a pretty cool grandmother when I was a teenager.

Her generosity extended beyond our family. She cared for people in nursing homes, even eventually for those who were younger than she. She gave to charitable causes, a fact apparently well known to charitable causes, because she received literally 20-30 mail solicitations per day. She was a pillar in her church at St. Michael’s in Auburn.

She wasn’t perfect. She was an impatient woman. I remember when we were leaving for Auburn with her and got no further than downtown Mobile. There was an accident inside the Bankhead tunnel, and we got into a huge traffic jam, with miles of cars before us and behind us. After going no-where for 30 minutes, she snapped and just started honking the horn over and over for 20 minutes. When we finally crept forward close enough to be within earshot of the policeman directing traffic, she rolled down her window and let him know how incompetent he was in no uncertain terms. Meanwhile, my sisters and I, mortified, hid under the seat in the back.

God was merciful to her in the last years of her life. Given her fierce independence and fiery nature, she would have not tolerated a long sickness. She was in her 80’s, but she woke up that morning at 6 a.m. as she always did, went swimming for exercise in the Auburn city pool at 7 a.m., then delivered a cake to the nursing home she had made the night before. She wasn’t feeling well—she was having trouble breathing—so she decided to go to the doctor later that morning, who told her she must immediately check into the hospital. It turns out she had cancer. She checked in on Thursday afternoon, the same day she had been swimming at 7 a.m. and died that Monday, just long enough for all of the family to come and see her for the last time.

As you think of that person in your life you admired but who is now deceased, ask yourself, what was their best trait? Their best virtue? We can best honor our deceased love ones on this, All Souls Day, by taking this virtue and working hard to make it our own.

I admire my grandmother for her generosity to others, her fierce, fiery independent spirit and her strong work ethic. I hope that I can be a person worthy of being called her grandson by being just as generous and working just as hard.

"Personally Opposed, but..."

2009-10-28T11:33:00.013-05:00

I was a student at Notre Dame in 1984 when then governor of New York Mario Cuomo came to campus and gave a much heralded/much reviled speech that attempted to reconcile his pro-abortion policies with his Catholicism. His "personally opposed but cannot impose my beliefs on others" argument has since become the mantra for over a generation of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Recently in my junior morality class, we had occasion to re-visit his speech. Here's my brief response to Cuomo's argument, some 25 years later:

Cuomo treats a civil right, the right to live, as if it were a matter of personal taste. All laws, especially those which protect the most vulnerable of parties, are founded not on preference or private sentiment, but upon a fundamental belief about the natural rights of man that precede civil society and which governments must protect to remain legitimate.

The Catholic Church does not believe abortion is wrong because it says so. Nor is the argument against abortion one from Scripture. The Church opposes abortion because it destroys our most basic right – the right to life –the foundation for all other rights. The Church does not “create” right and wrong; rather, it derives right and wrong from the natural order of things. Cuomo’s argument that “because I am Catholic, I am opposed to abortion, but as governor I cannot impose my religious views on my constituents” assumes the Church is making a sectarian religious argument that only applies to Catholics (a belief about the Eucharist or Mary, for example). But a natural rights argument is not a sectarian one. The same sentiment that inspires us to protect the rights of the criminally accused, that cares for the poor or that protects ethnic minorities--constituencies but for our nobler instincts could easily be taken advantage of – animates our laws. Those instincts are not “Catholic”, but human.

The flaw in Cuomo’s logic can be most easily shown by substituting other crimes into the formula: “I am personally opposed to rape, but I cannot impose my views on my constituents.” “I am personally opposed to murder... slavery… robbery.” Because these crimes trample upon the civil liberties of others, their prohibition is rightly enshrined in law and punishable by imprisonment.

Governments exist to protect and extend what our founders called “certain unalienable rights” and that “among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Indeed, the very justification of our Declaration of Independence from England was that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter (or to abolish) it.”

The right to life is the most basic of all civil liberties. Our leaders have a duty to alter laws that don’t protect it adequately, independent of their religious convictions, pro or con. Abortion is not a “religious” issue.

What Matters Most about Athletics

2009-10-25T16:48:00.009-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's assembly address to JPII students on October 26, 2009.

First, I want to thank the JPII Chamber Choir and Mrs. Elbehar for singing at Mass at Our Lady of the Lake on Sunday. I was delighted to be there--first, because you greatly enhanced the liturgy, and second, because I am proud to be the headmaster of a school with such an excellent choral program and am happy when others hear you. Good work.

I was also able to see my two favorite football teams play this weekend, in person. The first was our game against BGA Friday night down in Franklin. It was a competitive, well played game, but we lost 23-20 when they hit a FG late in the game to break the tie. On Saturday, I was invited to fly up to Notre Dame to watch the Irish play Boston College and happy to say that the good Catholics won, 20-16, due largely because of the stellar play of JPII’s Golden Tate, who had 11 catches for 128 yard yards and two TD’s. He’s so good that the same thing that happened at JPII is now occurring at Notre Dame stadium: whenever he gets the ball in open space, everyone instinctively stands up, anticipating something special is going to happen. I had fun.

I also understand our girls soccer team won their first play-off game on Saturday—a hard fought game against BGA in which they won 2-1, so they're now proceeding to a second round play-off game. Congratulations to our girls' cross country team that finished first in the mid-state regional tournament. They and the boys will run in the state finals on November 7. Our girls volleyball team finished around .500, a big step forward from last year. Good job, girls. And last week, our hockey team beat Hendersonville 3-1. Congratulations to all of you.

Athletics play a huge role in our society today and it’s an important part of our high school life here. As we wrap up the fall season and begin making the turn to our winter sports—in fact, I understand the basketball program has its first official practices today—I think it’s important to remember what’s truly important about high school athletic programs. As much as we all want to win, and as much as winning is more fun than losing, five or ten years from now, unless your team went undefeated and won a state championship, you won’t remember your won-loss record. You will, however, remember the good time you had with your teammates, the laughter in the locker-room, the bond of brotherhood or sisterhood you felt with them as you together experienced the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. You will remember the relationship you had with your coaches, who went through those times with you, whom sometimes you hated because they challenged you to perfection, whom most of the time you respected precisely because they expected and demanded so much from you.

If you’re an athlete who has finished your season or if your season is nearing completion, I suggest you ought to measure success by two simple questions: Did you have fun? Did you become a better person?

As much playing a sport can be time-consuming, difficult, sometimes monotonous, filled with disappointment if you’ve lost a close game or if you’ve been blown out, the bottom line is did you enjoy it? We forget too quickly that when it’s all said and done, we should be having fun. I coached my son’s football team when he was 11 years old, and we ended up having a good season and made it to the championship game. However, the day of the championship it was very cold, and rained harder than any day I remember, an utter deluge. It was miserable--the field was nothing but a mud pit. We lost the game 7-6. On the way home, I looked over at my son, who was both shivering cold and covered head to foot in mud. I asked him “So you glad the season is over”? He turned his eyes to me—the only thing not covered with mud—and said “No, Dad. I wish I could play football the whole year.” Well, he was only 11 and didn’t have a lot of other things pressing him for his attention like you do. I understand that at the high school level, even if you love what you’re playing, there’s a certain amount of relief when the season ends so you can spend a little more time with friends, or sleep on Saturday mornings, or catch up in your studies. But if you love the game, after some time off, you begin looking forward to the first practice of next season. So I ask you, those of you just finishing up your season: Did you enjoy it?

The second question is: Did you become a better person? Too often today we focus on about self-fulfillment, “getting mine”, stat lines, getting our names in the paper. But athletics teaches us to put the team before self. It teaches us to become more disciplined, to become tougher, to work harder. Sports challenges us to seek perfection, to “do my job” even if others are failing theirs, to work for long term ends—a game in October, when I am running sprints in July. These are values that make us stronger, better people. It’s an important question: You’ve just invested an enormous amount of your time and energy into your sport this season. Are you a better person for it?

If you can say you had fun and are a better person for it, you’ve had a great season. My congratulations and thanks to all of you who represent your school so well. We are proud of you; I enjoy watching you play.

Living in Daylight

2009-10-18T15:30:00.010-05:00

This is Mr. Weber's assembly address to students on October 19, 2009.

About 10 years ago, I got to know 4 boys in my school very well. From their first day as freshmen, they began getting in trouble—mostly for being unruly in the classroom—and they were always sent to see me since I didn’t have someone like Mr. McLaren. We did numerous work details together, scraping gum from underneath dining room tables, picking up paper around the campus and surrounding neighborhood, waxing the school bus on a Saturday morning and anything else I could dream up—just to keep these fellas in line. And as some of you who are frequent visitors to Mr. McLaren’s office might understand, as they became juniors and seniors, despite the fact we were frequently aggravated at each other, we developed a kind of love-hate respect and affection for one another.

One day in their senior year, I was looking for our football coach down at the locker-room after practice. I walked in just as the biggest and heaviest of these four fellas—think Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live—was just getting out of the shower, his backside to me. I pretended to become blind, my eyes seared by the horrible image I had been forced to see. We had a good laugh. Fast forward to May on their last day of school: the four brought me a present and told me not to open it until I was alone in my office. I guessed what it was and was right: The four fellas had taken a group picture together, bending over, mooning me, with the inscription: “Thanks for not giving up on us….” and they each signed their names.

We didn’t get a chance to talk again until after graduation, and they came up to me, a little nervous, and wanted to make sure I knew it was a joke. I said I took it that way, not to worry. “Good”, they said, “So you can throw it away now, but just know, Mr. Weber, we had the last laugh." “Throw it away? The last laugh?” I said. “You fellas are thinking short term. I’m saving that picture. When you come back for your 20th reunion with your wives and daughters, I intend to circulate copies to all your classmates, just for old times sake. You better be generous in the alumni appeals between now and then.”

I tell that humorous story to make a more serious point: We often think the consequences of our actions are short-term, rooted in the present. But increasingly, the mistakes we make in the present have longer-term consequences. Much of that has to do with technology. Back in Alabama, there were two girls in a private school who got drunk and posed nude for a cell phone picture. The boy who took the picture sent it to a friend, who sent it to someone else. When they realized the next day what had happened, it was too late. It had been widely circulated around the city and uploaded to porn sites around the world. When the school found out about it, the two girls were expelled, as was the person who took the picture and sent it to someone else. But that wasn’t the worst thing: These girls had to live with the uncertainty and embarrassment of not knowing who had seen that picture among their classmates and around the city.

Another example: one of my former students got drunk in college and did something stupid and was arrested. It was covered in the local newspaper. Even though he was not convicted and his arrest was legally expunged, today if you do a “google search” for this student, you can still find the account of his arrest. Employers are becoming savvy in using search engines for digging up information about their job applicants. A partner of an accounting firm I know purchases Facebook data about college grads applying for jobs in his firm—not just the Facebook pages that are showing their sites at graduation time, but pages that have been cached over the course of each applicants 4 years of schooling. Even before I was hired as JPII’s headmaster, the chair of the search committee here, Mr. Wood, did a thorough google search and read every article I’d ever published in a magazine, every article about me, every quote that had been attributed to me in the newspaper.

Jesus once said:

There is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops (Luke 12:2-3)

The best way to prevent ourselves from being embarrassed or from letting something about our private lives come back and bite us publicly is to work very hard at making our lives exemplary in every way—to live as if all of our actions and words were “in the light” no matter how private they may seem. Part of that is avoiding situations where we’re not in control of what’s happening, like the two girls who got drunk and didn’t realize the implications of what they had done until it was too late. If we live moral lives, if we try to live “in the light” as God wants us to, then we don’t need to worry so much about what’s “out there” about us. We can simply be ourselves.

Enemy of the Great

2009-10-11T14:39:00.003-05:00

As we begin the second quarter today, I’d like to talk a bit about greatness.

The gospel reading from this Sunday is interesting. A young man, perhaps not much older than you, comes to Jesus and says “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God. You know the commandments: Keep the Sabbath holy, Honor your parents, don’t lie, steal, murder.” “I’ve done these things since I was young” the young man tells Jesusproudly. Jesus, eying him, says, “There is one thing further you must do: sell all your possessions to the poor and come, follow me.” And the gospel says the young man walked away sad, for he was a wealthy young man.

My take on that story is the young man is a good guy. He’s following the commandments. But Jesus challenges him to be great. I think that may describe us all: on the whole, we’re pretty good people. We’re not killing people, most of the time we’re not stealing, we don’t often take God’s name in vain, we’re not sleeping around. But God calls us beyond even those things. He desires us to be great.

I read an interesting book over the break, by Jim Collins, called “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t”. He studied many companies in Wall Street, trying to figure out if there were common characteristics in companies that had out-performed the market by three times the general averages—the “great companies” vs. those who had only done well (“the good”). One of his findings is an interesting idea: “Good is the enemy of the great.” (repeat). What he means is that often the good companies were happy with their performance—“good” for them had become “good enough”, so they weren’t driven to seek more. Their vision in what they could be, what they could become, was limited, ordinary, pedestrian.

I think that can be true of all of us: you as students, we as your teachers or school leaders. We often measure ourselves against the masses and say to ourselves, “Well, maybe I’m not studying as much as I should, but I’m doing a heck of a lot more that my friend in another school.” “Maybe I could be a better teacher, but I’m sure better than _______”. “Maybe I’m not the best headmaster, but I know I’m better than most”. That kind of thinking will guarantee that we’ll be at most, “better than average” students, teachers or headmasters, but we’ll never be great. We’ll never be the true difference makers in this world if being “good enough” is all we aspire to be.

One of the things I am proudest about JPII is we have one, simple, ambitious goal for you: we want you to be great. We not only want you to be great, we think you can be great. It’s why our graduation requirements are higher than any school in the Nashville area. It’s why we don’t give D’s. It’s why we ask you to take 3 years of foreign language and 3 years of the Arts---both unusually high standards for even elite high schools. It’s why Mrs. Phillips and your teachers push you to take Honors and A.P. classes, even if you’re not sure you can do it. It’s why we play at the highest level of athletic competition in Tennessee, even if at times we struggle. It’s why we emphasize the importance of a life of faith, Mass each week, theology classes that require work just like the other classes, why we pray so frequently together. It’s why we have an Honor code, why we have a Veritas Council, why we emphasize discipline so strictly. It’s because from the first day this school opened, Pope John Paul II has expected greatness of itself and greatness of its students and its teachers.

As we begin the second quarter, don’t be like the young man who merely does what he is supposed to do. Challenge yourself to be more than that. God wants us to use all of our talents to the best of our abilities and he promises us that when we do so, we’ll thrive and be happy. Ask him to help you. He will.

I hope all of you have a great second quarter.

College Prep 101: A Guide for Middle School Parents

2009-10-05T00:04:00.019-05:00

Recently the faculty of JPII sponsored a seminar designed to help parents get their middle school children ready for college. This article is a highly condensed summary of what was said; for a more complete presentation of the seminar, go here.

If I’m a parent of a middle school child, how do I best prepare my child for college? What matters most in the college admissions process for selective schools? Does my child’s EXPLORE score (a pre-ACT test in 7/8th grade) indicate my child in on the right path? What can I do to guide him or her through the early teen years successfully?

In a national survey, colleges claimed the five most important criteria for admissions were: Grades in college prep classes, strength of curriculum, ACT or SAT scores, grades in all courses and admissions essays. However, the evidence suggests the greatest discriminator between selective and less selective schools are the applicant's ACT/SAT scores. Vanderbilt and Notre Dame students, for example, have a median composite score of a 31-32 on the ACT (or 97th to 99th percentile). Rhodes and Belmont students average 26-28 (84th-91st percentile), whereas U. Tennessee and U. Alabama students average 24-25 (75th-80th).

The average grade point averages of entering frosh in all six of these schools only varies by .46, from a 3.86 average at ND to a 3.4 average at U. Alabama, supporting the proposition that test scores matter more than GPA’s. This makes sense: GPA’s vary wildly among high schools, making them an unreliable way to measure applicants, whereas standardized test scores compare “apples to apples”. Should tests matter this much? Probably not, but the reality is that selective colleges receive tens of thousands of applications and must find ways to sort through them quickly.

For similar reasons, we also believe that the difficulty of curriculum taken in high school is an increasingly important factor for college admissions. On the common application now used by hundreds of colleges, high school counselors are asked to rate the student’s curriculum as “most demanding”, “very demanding”, “demanding”, “average” or “below average” compared to their classmates. For students who are serious about getting accepted at top schools, anything less than “very demanding” undercuts their cause dramatically.

If, then, test scores and strength of curriculum matter so much, what does this mean for middle school and high school programs? We must look first at what the ACT test measures. (For purposes of this seminar, we’ll focus on the ACT since it is most common in the south. Many colleges are now accepting both the ACT and the SAT, which ever the applicant prefers.) Surprisingly, the ACT does not assume advanced course work. The Math test, or example, is comprised of predominantly Pre-Algebra, Algebra I/II, Geometry and a few Trigonometry questions. Most of the Science questions are Earth Science, Biology or basic Physical Science. The English test is predominantly reading and grammar, whereas the Reading test measures comprehension and ability to interpret tone and nuance.

It is likely then that by late junior year, when students should begin taking the ACT, they will have covered the necessary topics in high school. HOW they’ve covered these topics, however, is critical: The ACT Science test places a heavy emphasis on interpreting data from experiments, drawing conclusions from charts and graphs and analyzing research. Are students doing these things regularly in their 7-12th grade program? Are students solving a variety of word problems in their Math courses, using manipulatives, drawing sketches, being asked to communicate mathematical ideas to their classmates and teacher, or are they merely learning techniques to solve a battery of similar algorithms? Are students reading consistently, picking out main ideas, asked to discuss tone, working with original documents, reading novels, being stretched in their vocabulary? How strong is the foundation students receive in grammar? Do they know the rules of grammar or do they just pick what sounds right? Students in schools that do these things consistently will improve their ACT performance dramatically.

But how do I know if my child on the right path for a good ACT score? Many schools give the EXPLORE test, a pre-ACT test for 8th graders and the PLAN test, another pre-ACT test for 10th graders. Predicting ACT performance in junior or senior year based on scores earned in 8th grade is partly a guess—there are many variables (quality of school, effort, rest before the test, work ethic during high school) that skew such predictions. Nevertheless, the ACT folks publish estimated PLAN scores from the EXPLORE and also publish estimated ACT scores from the PLAN, so putting these together, we’ve been able link EXPLORE to ACT and make broad predictions, available here.

What, then, are some practical things I can do as a parent to put my child in the best possible position for college?

1) Emphasize foundations. Middle school parents may worry their child is falling behind if he or she is not taking advanced courses in middle school. Don't worry--a thorough understanding of Algebra I and Comp I is more important. Not only will a firm foundation make the curricular “house’ sturdier throughout high school, remember that the ACT does not measure proficiency in Calculus!

2) Once in high school, insist your child takes the most difficult curriculum he or she can handle. Honors and A.P. classes will not only help with the "strength of curriculum" admissions criteria, it will help your child improve ACT performance.

3) Grades, though important, matter less than we may think, so be forgiving on grades, but unforgiving on effort. If your child is truly taking demanding courses, he or she will stumble from time to time. That's OK. Focus on consistent effort and the grades will take care of themselves in the long run.

4) Help your child develop good homework habits. Though it varies based on the child and the curriculum, we believe 10 minutes per grade level is a good minimum, so that 8th graders should be doing a minimum of 80 minutes, even if “he doesn’t have any”. There’s always reading to do, notes to review, a test to prepare for.

5) Help your child say “no”. Students take on too many commitments, hoping that a long resume will impress colleges. Most colleges, however, value depth over breadth. It’s better to be a 4 year member of the Debate team and indicate greater achievement and leadership in the Debate club each year than to dabble with Debate one year and something else the next. Also, being part of an athletic team is terrific, but these days varsity athletes are expected to play their sports year-round with club play and off season requirements; be careful your son or daughter isn't playing too many sports to the exclusion of other good activities, the most important of which is serious study. Kids wear down!

6) Insist on a regular cycle for sleep. Teens don’t get enough of it. Furthermore, they disrupt their body clocks on weekends by staying up late and then sleeping late in the mornings which makes Mondays almost useless as their bodies re-adjust.

7) Help your child develop a love of reading. Read to your children when they’re young, visit the library often, subscribe to magazines of interest as they get older, read books on long car trips together instead of watching DVD’s, become a reader yourself to model its importance to your children, insist on definitive bedtimes but allow reading in bed, and read the books your children must read for school so you can discuss with them. Reading ability is the single best predictor of future academic success.

8) Limit screen time. The average teenager watches three hours of T.V. per day, not counting time on the Internet.

9) Ensure that missing class is a rarity. No matter how diligent your child in making up missed work, the discussions, questions, and back and forth between teacher and child is irreplaceable.

10) Encourage your child and pray for him or her. The teenage years are rife with uncertainty, awkwardness, worry and stress. Prayer will help us keep things in perspective and our teen will be comforted knowing we’re praying for him or her. We can take comfort in knowing our child's future is in God's hands.